


Modernism 101

by ebbet



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Non-Magical, Art History, Black Hermione Granger, Clement Greenberg and the French Revolution and scintillating commentary on the Great Modernists, Desi Harry Potter, F/M, Implied Casual Sex, Modern Art, UST? UST! but only until it is RST, Vomiting, american university I'm sorry I don't know enough about the UK, angrily glaring across the lecture hall, arms it's about the arms, cigarette and weed smoking, frat star hockey bro ron weasley, lots of stationery references, museum cafe muffins, passing mention of cocaine, passing mention of date rape drugs, passing mention of death, probable butchering of the fine sport of hockey, violence in art, what is an art historian but a wretched bundle of opinions, what you will get includes irritation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-13
Updated: 2020-07-21
Packaged: 2021-02-22 23:17:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 22,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23635297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ebbet/pseuds/ebbet
Summary: Daphne Greengrass was going to spend senior fall working on her thesis and grad school applications. Not stuck in Modernism 101 because the university suddenly decided that her high school credits no longer counted for pre-requisites. And certainly not doing group projects with some gigantic ginger sports oaf.
Relationships: Daphne Greengrass/Ron Weasley, Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter
Comments: 59
Kudos: 81





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [provocative_envy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/provocative_envy/gifts).



> Eternally inspired by [@provocative-envy's](https://archiveofourown.org/users/provocative_envy/pseuds/provocative_envy) vision of Daphne Greengrass as an art historian for like ... summer madness??? months ago that didn't end up winning BUT the vision of it was TOO MUCH. Less heist, more art historical discourse. 
> 
> obvs. not beta'd because who has the patience for that; lmk about errors, etc.
> 
> eta 7.20.20: Tomorrow is Andrea's birthday, which inspired me to finish it and gift this bizarre and silly fic to the one who inspired it ~ hbd !!!!

“I’m sorry, but the requirements have changed.” 

The chair’s voice was calm and level, tinged only with a bit of regret. Daphne pressed her fingernails into her palms, hiding her agitation just out of her line of sight. 

“It’s a university-wide shift,” she said, “Believe me, I voted against it in the faculty meeting, but …” She trailed off and pushed her chair away from the desk. She stared out the window over her crimson reading glasses. Daphne blinked a few times to keep the panic from her voice. 

“And there’s no way you could possibly make an exception? I mean, I got a five on the AP, and when I was planning my course load for the past three years, this policy wasn’t—” 

“I wish I could, I really wish I could, but …” The chair laced her fingers together. “It’s only one semester of an introductory course, Daphne. You’ll fly through it. It’s being team taught by Brooks, Walters, and yours truly. Just check this box and concentrate on the thesis and the applications.”

She nodded at Daphne twice. 

That was a dismissal. 

Daphne drew in a shaky breath, exhaled, and rose. 

“I still have to sign your major card,” the chair said. 

Daphne sank back in the chair and filled in the correct box.

_Senior fall._

_Modernism 101._

❦

_I. Introduction. Modernism, modernity, and modern art._

Daphne settled into her seat in the center of the third row of the lecture hall seven minutes early. She uncapped her Muji pen and copied the lecture title from the syllabus she’d picked up at the back. Geoff and Marissa were TAing, so she’d had a nice commiserating moan with them about how absolutely asinine it was to suddenly strip seniors of their previously-approved pre-req waivers in what was clearly a money grab to require more semesters of credit. But, as Marissa said with a shrug, “C’est la vie.” 

So she was here, Leuchtturm at the ready. The seats were filling slowly with sweatpantted first years, but her row remained empty. 

Really, she wasn’t that frightening looking. 

Daphne swallowed and rotated her signet ring. This was fine. She was fine. 

Professor Brooks tapped the microphone at 9:59. No sound came out. She threw her hands up and Marissa and Geoff descended. Glorified IT. Daphne would be doing that one day. Here or maybe even at one of the other Ivies. But one day. She’d be the one working out projectors for Guggenheim fellows. And then one day she’d be the one befuddled by whatever technology they’d have when she finally got tenure. Holograms. It was bound to be holograms. 

Suppressing a groan at the thought, she flipped back in her notebook and added the lecture title to the table of contents. 

And then the smell of Axe overwhelmed her. She swallowed, blinked, and pressed her lips together. 

“Hey, is this seat taken?” 

Daphne raised her head slowly and attempted not to breathe too deeply. He was about seven feet tall, ginger, clad in some kind of sports shirt, and reeked, absolutely reeked, of cheap deodorant. 

“I hardly can claim a monopoly on this row of seats,” she said. She hadn’t meant it to sound mean. 

“Great,” he said, and flopped into the seat directly on her right.

Did he not understand that it was common courtesy to leave a seat in between you and a stranger? What kind of— 

“Hey, do you have a pencil?”

Daphne pressed her lips together. He didn’t seem like the kind of person who would return a pencil.

She looked at him. And the absolute bastard softened his eyes and said, “If I stay in this class, I’ll bring you a coffee next time.” 

“A soy latte from Beneton’s,” she snapped as she bent to unzip her Longchamp. “Extra hot. Don’t even think about bringing me coffee from the dining hall.” 

“This better be a good pencil.”

“I expect it back at the end of class.”

He grabbed the silver mechanical pencil. Her skin felt hot where he’d inadvertently touched her hand. She fought the urge to shake her head as he flipped over his copy of the syllabus and wrote the date.

“Welcome to Modernism 101,” Professor Brooks began.

❦


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See end notes for works of art mentioned or referenced.

_II. Galleries and Salons_

It wasn’t like she was waiting for him to show up again. He’d probably decided to drop the class when Brooks stressed the strict attendance policy and required museum visits. It wasn’t like she’d only had a tea this morning in anticipation of the coffee that may or may not appear, which, as she blinked her eyes at the the title slide—a half-finished watercolor of a room crowded with paintings—was a work that she needed to know but wasn't quite coming to mind—

“One hot soy latte, direct from Beneton’s,” a hoarse voice interrupted. 

“Saint Aubin, salon of 1765,” launched out of Daphne’s mouth as she flicked her gaze away from the screen.

“What?”

A blush rose across her face. _Certified freak behavior,_ she heard in Pansy’s voice. 

He was back, holding two white paper cups, ginger curls falling over blinking eyes. 

“I think this one’s yours, but better check. They didn’t mark the cups.” 

She wrapped one hand around his offering. “You even managed Beneton’s.” It was probably stupid to accept a drink from a stranger, but she doubted Ginger Jock was going to roofie her in a ten o'clock lecture.

He snorted, and, while balancing his own cup on one knee, unfolded the miniature lecture hall desk. His knees banged up against it. 

“I can follow directions,” he said. 

Daphne peered inside the cup. It looked like a latte. It smelled like a latte. 

“What’d you get?” 

“A personal question?" 

“I can’t tell if this is the correct drink unless I know what you got,” Daphne shot back.

The hairs at the back of Daphne’s neck rose as he considered her. Blue eyes. Bits of sleep in the inner edges. 

“Does it smell like coffee?” he asked, nodding at her cup. 

She didn’t need to bend forward to smell it again. 

“Then it’s yours.” 

Daphne settled the lid into place and took a sip. It was perfect.

“The Salon of 1765, painted by Gabriel de Saint Aubin—”

“Eyy,” he said under his breath, nudging her knee with his own. 

Daphne pressed her lips together to keep her smile contained.

❦

_III. Art in The Time of Revolution_

This was her lecture. Her period. Her art. 

Daphne wrapped the end of her ponytail around her finger as she floated back into the brain space of the thesis, which, since she’d weirdly woken up at seven, she’d spent all morning working on. Since the guillotine earrings served as the introductory object, maybe she’d better move the jewelry chapter forward, but then the importance of the sans-culotte as a key signifier of identity—she made a note to double-check Werlin—but foregrounding the sans-culotte made it seem like masculinity would be her key topic, which— 

A cloud of Axe enveloped her and a coffee cup appeared on top of her notebook.

Daphne dropped her hand from her hair. 

“I—you didn’t need to—” 

“Yeah, well, caffeine,” he said with a shrug and a smile.

Daphne’s eyes narrowed. “Now I owe you something. And I don’t even know your hot beverage preferences.” 

“I mean, you could always ask for my name. Most people would think that’s more important than, uh, hot beverage preference.” He said it with a half-laugh, leaning back in his seat as his eyes slid off her. 

Daphne straightened and turned towards him. Extending one hand, she said, “I’m Daphne Greengrass, lovely to meet you…” 

He looked at her hand and, laughing so loudly that two girls in the second row turned to look at them, took it, squeezed, and pumped it up and down a few times.

“Ron Weasley, Miss Greengrass.” 

He doffed an imaginary hat as he let go. 

“Or should I say mademoiselle?” 

God, not a lame French reference. She pressed her hand against her corduroy skirt. Her hands were never warm and now they were damp. Luckily, Walters was clearing his throat so there wasn't time to worry about that. 

“On May 5, 1789, the Estates-General, a general assembly that a French monarch had called since 1614, met to consider tax reforms—little did Louis XVI know that this group of clergy, nobles, and commoners—sketched by academician Jacques Louis David two years later—would spark a revolution that would take his head and shift the global course of history.” 

Walters paused and flicked to the next slide. “And of course, made this device famous.” 

Cue etching of a guillotine.

“Or, should I say, infamous,” Walters said and laughed. Murmurs and some chuckles. 

“I bet you’d be guillotined,” Ron whispered. 

“I’ll guillotine you,” Daphne hissed back to try to get him to shut up during a lecture, even though she’d heard all of Walters’s jokes since, one, she was his advisee, and two, she'd taken his seminars on Neoclassicism and Romanticism. Also, who thought they could just joke about guillotining strangers, even if they'd bought them coffee twice and ok, Daphne was wearing pearls, but like, she wasn't a French aristocrat.

“Spicy.” 

“It is not spicy to be guillotined!” 

Walters switched to a photograph of the Carnavalet’s gold and silver gilt guillotine earrings. “We even see the cultural impact of the guillotine in wearable objects d’art, such as these earrings, which, in fact, are the centerpiece of a senior thesis by one of my students, who I believe is taking this course—” 

He paused and peered into the auditorium. “Daphne? Where are you?”

Daphne stared down at her notebook. 

There was a reason she’d woken up early today. She’d known this was coming. 

So she extended one arm into the air, tilted her head, and did her best parade wave paired with a small smile—not too broad, darling, you look both cocky and insane, in Mum's words—then drew her hand down when the first years turned back to their laptops. 

As she settled back into her seat, she dared a glance at Ron.

His mouth was hanging open. 

“What?” she whispered. Walters had lost interest in her and was discussing the disaster that was the French economy under the Ancien Régime. 

Ron blinked, closed his mouth, and shook his head.

Daphne crossed her arms. Fine. He could think she was a freak. That was fine. She was fine for the next thirty-four minutes. She didn't look at him once.

“David opens up the entire top third—almost half—of the painting by leaving it visually undefined. The wall or darkness looms over Marat’s prone form, the negative space suggesting the absence of life and the largeness of loss.” 

She bit her bottom lip and concentrated on the tenuous way one of the letters rested on the wooden cube next to Marat’s bath. Fragile and abrupt. All that unfinished business. 

Unbidden, Daphne’s gaze crept over to Ron, whose face had settled into a blankness that seemed strange for what she knew of him, which, she didn't really know him, but at least he was no longer Nameless Ginger, and—oh. 

Wait. 

He was one of those Weasleys. 

Daphne blinked. Of course he understood loss. His brother. Last year? Two years ago? Daphne put her pen down. She didn’t remember the details, but it was something violent and Draco had been really upset for weeks because that weird kid he'd had a crush on for, like, ever, was best friends with some Weasley.

She wasn’t sure if Ron was _that_ brother because goodness, there were about eight of them, but she thought of Astoria. Marat’s corpse was projected at about twelve feet tall and there was blood and Ron was looking smaller and smaller and she leaned a bit to the right and pressed her arm against his. 

She felt him look at her, but she didn’t move her eyes from the slide—now, thankfully, the _Sabine Women_ —or move her arm for the rest of the lecture.

“Is it just me or does David have a thing for naked guys?” he burst out as the lights flickered on. 

“I mean,” Daphne said, realizing that he was going to pretend that the whatever it was that had happened hadn’t happened, which was also fine, “the male nude was a key subject in classicism, so it only makes sense that during neoclassicism, there would be equal interest in it. Though,” she paused and tilted her head to one side, “you could definitely bounce quarters off Romulus’s ass.”

Ron snorted.

"Well, uh, until Tuesday, Mademoiselle Greengrass," he said before loping away. 

Daphne sipped the dregs of her latte.

❦

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Works discussed in this chapter, including links (accessed April 14, 2020):
> 
> 1\. Gabriel de Saint-Aubin, _[The "Salon du Louvre" in 1765](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gabriel-Jacques_de_Saint-Aubin,_Vue_du_Salon_de_1765_\(1765\).jpg), _1765, pencil, watercolor, pen, and ink, Musée du Louvre, Département des Arts Graphiques, Paris. 
> 
> 2\. Jacques-Louis David, _Le Serment du Jeu de paume_ [[sketch/preparatory drawing of the Tennis Court Oath]](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Le_Serment_du_Jeu_de_paume.jpg), 1791, ink [and white gouache?] on paper, Musée National du Château, Versailles.
> 
> 3\. Anonymous, _Essai de la Guillotine ([Trying out the Guillotine](https://www.ucl.ac.uk/museums-static/obl4he/frenchrevolution/11_trying_out_the_guillotine.html))_, c. 1793, etching and aquatint, publisher unknown, University College London. 
> 
> 4\. Anonymous, [Guillotine Earrings](https://twitter.com/menstralkrampus/status/926640604594892800/photo/1), c. 1794, gold and silver gilt, Musée Carnavalet, Paris. 
> 
> 5\. Jacques-Louis David, _[The Death of Marat,](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Death_of_Marat_by_David.jpg)_ 1793, oil on canvas, Royal Museums of Fine Art, Belgium.
> 
> 6\. Jacques-Louis David, _[The Intervention of the Sabine Women,](https://www.louvre.fr/en/oeuvre-notices/intervention-sabine-women)_ 1799, oil on canvas, Musée du Louvre, Paris.


	3. Chapter 3

_IV. Empire and Dissolution_

The sky broke open just as the museum hoved into sight. 

“Fuck,” Daphne hissed. The rain plastered her bangs down and into her eyes and she could barely blink her way into the lecture hall. Delicious little drowned rat, she heard in Blaise’s crisp accent. 

“Yikes,” Geoff said and extended a slide list towards her.

Daphne extended an index finger. “Can you just sort of jam it—”

“Here, I’ll take hers,” a hoarse voice interrupted. Daphne practiced her terse smile but it broadened when she realized it was Weasley. 

“Thanks.”

“Double fisting this early in the semester,” Ron said as she headed towards the usual row. “You seem more organized than that.”

“Don’t be absurd,” Daphne said. “That one’s for you.”

He shrugged off a team raincoat—what a cliché—and traded her a slide sheet for his drink. 

“I didn’t know what you drink because you’re a paranoid weirdo who treats a drink order like classified information, so,” Daphne said, fluffing her bangs and scowling up at David’s betrayal of republicanism. “You’ll probably hate it.” 

He didn’t take the lid off, just sipped it and yelped. 

“When you have to haul drinks across campus, it’s more efficient to order them extra hot.” She uncapped her pen and resisted the urge to deface the slide sheet with her favorite French insults. Napoleon gave her a headache. 

Ron shook his head at her. “Efficient. Try dangerous.”

Daphne hummed. Her drink was perfect. 

“He rode a mule across the Saint-Bernard Pass,” Daphne said and sniffed. “What a fraud.”

“Oh, yeah, like the Tennis Court meeting dudes were all rocking six packs when they decided to have a revolution while naked, yeah. That was totally realistic.” Ron’s mouth quirked up on the left. 

“I hardly—”

Professor Walters tapped the microphone. Daphne bit the inside of her cheek. 

Oh, that was a joke, she realized, as Ron grinned at her and slouched back in his seat.

“Not my usual, but good,” he said as the lights came back on, wiggling the white paper cup at her. “Thanks, though.”

Well, that ruled out chai. 

His hair went wavy in the damp.

❦

_V. Romanticism_

“Another horse boy,” Ron said as he slipped into the seat next to her. “Your favorite.”

Daphne rolled her eyes. “Though ideologically it’s all a heap of garbage, Géricault’s work is actually, well, aesthetically interesting. Unlike late David, which is just static and tedious.” 

“So you like grey horses and not white ones,” he said, shaking his hair out from where the baseball cap had pushed it down. “Anti-white-knight complex?”

“Oh, totally,” Daphne said lightly, twisting her signet ring. White horses. She blinked back a memory of pushing up Snow’s forelock and kissing her between the eyes; before she got shy, before all of the, and, yeah, she was back in the lecture hall. Her fingers stilled. She breathed in. Axe wasn’t acceptable beyond middle school. Blaise would have an eyebrow to raise about that. Not that Blaise was going to meet him. 

“Settle down, please,” Brooks commanded. “As many of you will no doubt have noticed, we have a group assignment coming up in a few weeks. It’s essentially an exercise in close looking. You’ll partner up, head to the museum, find one of the works listed on the syllabus—yes, you can choose another work if you really must, but run it by one of the TAs first and it cannot be outside the time periods and locations we’ve already covered—and look at the painting for thirty minutes. Write down your observations the whole time. Talk about it. Write up an essay about that whole experience. A short essay.”

Brooks tossed her grey mane over her shoulder. “This sounds simple. But looking, really looking, is hard work.” 

Ron snorted. 

Daphne shot him a glare. 

“Try benching two fifty.”

“Intellectual labor,” Daphne replied, shimmying the syllabus out and considering the list of works. It would be the most efficient to go for the assignat, but that was so predictable. The Goya caprichos were tempting. She was definitely not doing the van Loo.

“Romanticism …” Brooks began. 

Ron nudged her and raised his eyebrows. She raised her own back, because, like, what?

He leaned across and scrawled something across her syllabus. At least it was in pencil. 

_Partners?_

At least, that’s what Daphne assumed it said. 

She rolled her eyes but nodded. 

She’d rather do it alone, but if she had to partner up, it would just be easier if they didn’t try to inject Foucault into every other sentence like some of the first years. Ron seemed … malleable. 

Daphne tucked her syllabus back into the folder. 

❦

_VI. The 1855 World’s Exhibition_

He didn’t come to lecture. 

He hadn’t said anything after the conclusion of the last lecture, just nodded at her, did his dumb little frat boy upwards nod, and rushed away. Maybe he had some sports luncheon. Whatever. They could decide on their painting at the next lecture, Daphne had thought.

But now he wasn’t here. Daphne’s stomach lurched as Brooks flipped through engraving after engraving of the Exposition. 

How were they going to set a time to meet? 

She could email him, but like, that would be caving. Daphne knew she’d be pulling the majority of the weight in this project anyway, and wasn’t it just like a man to assume the woman was going to handle all the administrative details—she pressed her lips together and glared down at the paper cup she’d set on the ground in front of his seat.

Cold hot chocolate was gross. 

❦

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Works discussed in this chapter, including links (accessed May 15, 2020):
> 
> 1\. Jacques-Louis David, _[Napoleon Crossing the Alps](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon_Crossing_the_Alps#/media/File:David_-_Napoleon_crossing_the_Alps_-_Malmaison2.jpg) _, 1801, oil on canvas, Château de Malmaison, Rueil-Malmaison.
> 
> 2\. Théodore Géricault, _[The Charging Chasseur](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:GericaultHorseman.jpg) _, 1812, oil on canvas, Louvre Museum, Paris.
> 
> 3\. Nicolas-Marie Gatteaux (design) and Jean-Baptiste Gérard (lettering), _[assignat of 15 sols](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Assignat_de_15_sols.jpg) _, 1790s, engraving, location unknown.
> 
> 4\. Francisco Goya, _[Los Caprichos](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_caprichos) _, 1797-1798, published as an album in 1799, aquatint and etching, multiple locations.
> 
> 5\. Carl van Loo, _[Venus Requesting Vulcan to Make Arms for Aeneas](https://hoodmuseum.dartmouth.edu/objects/2005.2) _, about 1735, oil on canvas, Hood Museum of Art, Hanover, New Hampshire.
> 
> 6\. Multiple artists, _[various views of the 1855 exposition buildings](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palais_de_l%27Industrie)_ , 1855, engraving, multiple locations.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Per usual, see the end note for the artworks mentioned.

_VII._ Olympia: _the Modern Nude_

Olympia was an old friend. 

Friend might have been a bit strong. Her eyes were a bit too blank, her gaze just beyond Daphne and Blaise as they’d stood in front of the painting at the Orsay. Blaise had examined the wall text, rolled his eyes, and said in a stage whisper, “They don’t even mention Deborah.”

Daphne had ignored him, staring at the black maid. “Does it mention O’Grady or like, anything about _her_ objectivity?” 

“The Orsay is barely performatively woke,” Blaise said. 

He tilted his head and considered the painting. “If we’d brought some flowers, we could reenact it, even if it is horribly cliché.”

Daphne stiffened. “I don’t know—”

“Obviously, I’d be Olympia,” Blaise said, wrapping one arm around her waist. “You don’t have the big dick energy.” 

Daphne couldn’t stop the giggle that rose out of her chest. 

The elderly guard shot them a glare. Blaise glared back, and, switching to French—Daphne hated that; Blaise had a perfect Parisian accent and he knew she was insecure about having spent her childhood summers at La Couronne—said, “I think it’s just darling these little suits the guards wear. So sophisticated.”

“Shut up,” Daphne hissed in French, smacking him in the side but grinning. There was a pang at the old man’s suddenly blank expression as they swept out of the room. But they hadn’t done anything wrong. There hadn’t even been anyone else in the gallery. 

“I believe you owe me a photoshoot in the allée centrale. But, like, casual, just like I’m wandering by one of those marble nudes. Not the Carpeaux. Too lumpy.”

“The Narcissus is more appropriate.”

Blaise wiggled his eyebrows. “I’ll take what I can get.”

Daphne floated back to the present as the now-familiar whiff of Axe enveloped her. 

Why did he have a fucking black eye?

“Hey,” Ron said, as though nothing was unusual. He flipped open his wide-ruled off-brand notebook and hunted around for some writing implement in his backpack. 

“Um,” Daphne said. The bruise was kind of yellow and purple at the same time. Like that Rothko in Tehran. She swallowed around the memories of Christie’s and realized she’d written the wrong date on her notes. 

She crossed it out. Why didn’t she have one of those whiteout pens. 

“When do you want to do the museum thing?” 

Brooks tapped the microphone. 

“Whenever,” Daphne said, shooting for nonchalant and cool.

“Ok, but like, my schedule is kind of a bitch, so can—”

“You shouldn’t say bitch,” Daphne snapped. The Christie’s memories were coming back and it was so, so unfair that she was stuck here in this stupid class with this stupid boy who didn’t even understand how the structures of misogyny structured slang and didn’t even come to class and she was going to fail this assignment and she didn’t know how to calculate that to figure out her grade because she’d never, ever failed. 

Ron held his hands up. “Sorry. I didn’t mean, like … ” 

“Olympia, home of the gods,” Brooks began. 

Daphne blinked at the blurry screen. 

She didn’t look at him for the rest of the class. 

When the lights came back on, Ron put his phone down on her notebook. Android. It was open to some kind of new contact page. Daphne glanced up. 

“I mean, you can partner with someone else if you want to,” he said with forced casualness. Even Daphne could read that. 

She picked up the phone.

“One, I’m not working with a first year; two, you’re not going to get a better partner; three—is your phone broken?”

“You have to swipe.”

“How do you swipe numbers? It’s not like an algorithm can learn how to auto predict telephone numbers.” 

Ron took his phone back. Daphne gave him her number. He tapped it in, then looked up at her.

“What was point three?”

Daphne had no idea.

❦

_after class work_

_hey it’s ron_

_thursday_

_??_

Daphne stared at the green texts. 

“What?” Blaise demanded, holding out a hand for her phone. “He wants to meet after class on Thursday.”

“Who uses two question marks?” Pansy asked. There was a piece of quinoa on her chin. 

“Who the fuck is Ron?” Draco demanded. “Where did you get this number?” 

“Are you honestly going on a _lunch_ date with someone who has an Android?”

Daphne grabbed her phone back. “It’s a group project. For Modernism 101.” 

The three of them groaned in unison. 

“Sorry, babe.” 

“That blows.”

“Do you have to be with a freshman?” 

“They’re called first years now,” Pansy said. “And no, she’s not. He’s a senior, too. A hot ginger senior.”

Daphne narrowed her eyes. 

“Geoff.” 

Pansy shrugged. “He’s not _my_ TA.” Blaise groaned. 

“It’s still against the spirit of the law,” Daphne said and stabbed a spinach leaf. 

“No one cares about that reheated mess of a non-relationship,” Blaise snapped. “Does this Ron play hockey?”

Daphne tilted her head. “Yeah, maybe? He like, wears sports clothes.” 

“Wait, like Ron Weasley?” Draco gasped. “Potter’s best friend?” 

“You just shoehorn him into every conversation, don’t you?” 

“That’s hardly shoehorning; it’s actually quite relevant.”

As Pansy and Draco bickered, Blaise snatched a strawberry from Daphne’s salad. She’d been saving that, thank you.

“Hockey Ron’s hot,” he said after chewing. “Even if he does have an Android.”

“Group project,” Daphne said and tapped a reply message. 

_ok_

“That’s cold. Not even an emoji. Wow.”

Daphne dropped her phone back into her bag. 

❦

_VIII. Impressionism_

Ugh, haystacks. Daphne grabbed a slide sheet and stomped towards her usual seat. Impressionism was dumb. And popular. And pretty. And complicated and tied up with the narrative of those individual genius men or as an argument that Monet’s later visual explorations could be explained away by a degenerative eye condition. 

Ron was already in his seat. Daphne stepped backwards.

He looked up and gave her a little wave. He’d gotten her a slide sheet. 

And a coffee.

Daphne was vibrating by the time they made it to Pissarro. It was the caffeine.

❦

She’d said she wasn’t hungry, but Ron plunked a muffin down on the table. 

“She said it’s like morning glory, which is like nuts and shit,” Ron said. “Protein.”

“I’m fine,” she said and pushed it back towards him. The museum café muffins were dry. 

“I got a panini,” he said. “Special art day treat.” 

Daphne raised her eyebrows. She pulled her syllabus out. 

“I think we should do the Goya caprichos, well, one of them, anyway—”

The panini arrived. 

“Thanks,” Ron said with a grin at the girl who worked at the counter. Was she a waitress? A kind of waitress? Daphne didn’t remember getting her food brought out to her, but like, whatever.

“Goya,” Daphne said. 

Ron bit into the sandwich. There was some mozzarella string chaos. 

“I want to see them first.”

“I know what they all are, though.” Daphne broke a piece off the muffin. It was dry. But it also had pecans. 

“I don’t.” 

“Yeah, but like,” Daphne said with a sigh. “You wanted to be my partner because it’s like, an easy A, so, like, just let me pick.”

Ron put down his sandwich.

“Really?”

Daphne looked down.

“Is that really what you think?”

She glanced up. 

“Sorry,” she said, and tried another bite of muffin. It caught in her throat. Blaise said she shouldn’t apologize so much, but like, what else was she supposed to say to that? 

“Don’t apologize if that’s what you think,” Ron said and bit into his sandwich again. “But it’s not what I think.”

Daphne sipped the dregs of her cold coffee.

❦

He’d picked the van Loo. Of course he did. 

Completely unswayed by her arguments in favor of anything, literally anything else, he plopped down on the bench in front of the stupid van Loo. 

Daphne resisted the urge to stamp her foot.

“You just like it because it’s the only one where there’s tits,” Daphne snapped, refusing to look at him. 

“Oh, so this doesn't count as a tasteful allegorical nude, just because you don't like it?”

“Right,” Daphne said, pulling out her phone and setting a timer for thirty minutes. This would be over soon enough. “Don’t even think about saying anything.” 

Ron did a mouth-zipping gesture. Daphne tried not to gag. 

Pulling out her notebook and pencil, she approached the van Loo. 

The cherubim were enough to make her actually gag. 

Though it did look like that one was kicking the other one in the face. 

Writing while standing was the worst. 

_Diagonals (Z)._

Wishing she could remember anything about van Loo or at least look at the wall label—strictly forbidden until after the discussion according to the assignment—Daphne was trapped in a spiral of violent feelings towards the asinine painting. 

_Textures (clouds vs. ribbon)._

Aeneas. What a dick. As if he deserved godlike weapons after what he’d end up doing to Dido. Not that Venus had known, like, at this time, but still. 

_Color — blue/Mary?_

Her right leg was locked. She bent it.

_Vulcan invisible disability ???_

His body was so tight, muscular. How did one make visible the ravages of circumstance? Had van Loo just abandoned that part of the myth for the sake of masculine beauty?

_Cyclops._

Why had the girl at the café brought out his sandwich? Was that new?

_Ekphrasis of shield (Aeneid)._

She couldn’t figure out which thread she should follow. Close looking usually felt like a blanket, engrossing her in a world that was particularly not her own, wrapping around and channeling and taming her brain along channels that were— 

He was standing right behind her. 

Daphne stiffened. 

_Clouds — discoloration with age?_

He was so tall. She was tall. But he was looming. Looming very close. She dropped her notebook.

He stooped and handed it back to her. 

_Hands (directionality)._

He didn’t have his notebook. Was he writing anything down? Did he really expect her to do this whole assignment alone? 

He raised one hand and scratched his jaw. 

Daphne glared at the painting.

_Stupid beard._

She couldn’t take this anymore; she had to look—how had only eight minutes passed. 

He’d seen her check. That was what the sardonic smile was about. He didn’t have to check, he was just leaning into this whole looking at art without talking thing as though it were natural for him to just sit back and float along for the ride of life contemplating boobs or whatever he thought they were going to get out of this painting. 

_Ribbons ??? allegorical ??_

Her legs were starting to hurt. He was still looming. 

He leaned forwards. Daphne couldn’t figure out what exactly he was looking at. 

She darted for the bench. 

_Division earth/sky._

He scratched the back of his neck. 

_Morality of colors._

It wasn’t really fair that she’d gotten stuck with him. He wasn’t even taking notes on this experience, which was explicitly part of the assignment. 

She closed her eyes.

“Aren’t you supposed to look at the painting?” 

The bench creaked. 

Daphne scowled and then opened her eyes. 

_Musculature — flexed, academic._

One of his arms was behind her, just casually slung back on the bench as he leaned back. 

Casual. 

Daphne clicked her pencil. The lead was unsteady. 

_Armor, shine._

She couldn’t see Venus’s face from here. The gallery light glared, concealing that expression of—she couldn’t put her finger on it. 

_Phallic hammer._

Her phone started buzzing.

“Can we talk now, your highness?” 

“I can’t believe you didn’t take notes.”

They spoke at the same time. 

How was he so tall even when he was sitting down? 

“Impressions?” Daphne said, drawing a line under her own garbled notes. 

Ron leaned back and tilted his head. 

“Well, the tits are alright,” he said with a smirk. 

She was not writing that down. 

“But that’s not the main appeal.”

“What a relief.”

“It’s more about the like,” he broke off and huffed a massive sigh of breath. “You know how they’re looking at each other?”

It seemed not to be a rhetorical question. He was staring at her. 

Daphne hummed. 

She didn't like the way they were looking at each other. It was almost naked, beseeching. 

Venus and Vulcan, that is. 

“Like, he’s not good enough for her.” 

“He’s her husband.” 

“But he can finally do something for her, be useful, so like, even if she doesn’t love him, there’s a possibility that she might—whatever.” 

He broke off again and scowled. 

Daphne felt quite hot. 

“Do you have any thoughts on van Loo’s aesthetic decisions?”

Ron didn’t say anything. 

“I was thinking about the duality of the colors. Venus is blue, with all those associations of the Virgin—”

“Virgin? Venus?” 

“Mary? She’s clothed in blue as both the queen of the heavens and because blue used to be a really expensive pigment. Like, the Virgin Mary, Mother of God?” 

Ron laughed. “Yeah, I know who the Virgin Mary is. I have six ginger siblings. You do the math.”

“What math?” 

“Irish Catholic?” Ron tilted his head. “Oh, you’re too politically correct.” 

“I didn’t want to make … assumptions,” she said crisply. 

“So if I said you had one sibling, probably younger, definitely coming here one day because it’s a family tradition dating back to the eighteen hundreds—”

“1673. Founding trustee.”

“Maximum WASP,” Ron said and smirked. “Your dad’s what, an investment banker? Your mom graduated here with a 4.0 but they got engaged after she did a year at Goldman’s. House in the Hamptons, maybe another one on a lake in Maine?”

“Shockingly, none of those assumptions are correct,” Daphne snapped. 

“Oh?” Ron asked. “What’s not correct?” 

“It was the Société Générale.” His face was blank. “Paris. He said he missed her too much.”

Ron hummed. “She came back?”

“She said the French bankers were even worse,” Daphne said. 

“Are they still together?” 

It was all white wine and Xanax and miles of carpeting and the crumpled black thong she’d found down the backseat of the Benz. 

“Why do you care?”

Ron held up his hands again, as if he were so innocent, instead of someone who just picked and picked at these scabs and pried into things that were definitely not relevant. 

“Why don’t you like this painting?” he asked after a few minutes of silence. 

“It just sucks,” Daphne said shortly. 

“Why?”

“It’s an academic painting of a trite subject that’s essentially just an excuse for van Loo to present a supplicant nude woman. The color associations are basic and the z-shaped composition is tediously Baroque. The clouds are too solid and he’s just showing off with that little reflection in the armor.” Daphne took a breath. “There’s nothing interesting about it.” 

Ron stood and walked towards the painting. He considered it, then glanced over his shoulder and said, “I think you just don’t like it because you don’t know what you’d do if someone looked at you like that.”

“He’s just expecting a sexual reward for this shield, so like, excuse me for not finding that alluring or romantic or whatever.” 

“Come here.” 

Daphne didn’t move. 

Then he was in front of her, pulling her to her feet, marshalling her towards the painting. 

“You looked at it for half an hour and you don’t see it?”

Daphne glared at Vulcan’s face. The three-quarter view was so extreme that there was only one eye. He pointed to the cyclopes not triumphally but in a way that his muscular wrist appeared fragile, his index finger so close to the goddess’s shadowed, sandalled foot, as though he was aware of the distance between them.

“His beard is dumb,” Daphne attempted. 

She glanced up, then looked back at the painting. The gallery lights cast a dark shadow onto Ron’s neck. 

“His anatomy is so academic. It’s all too—flexed.”

Ron laughed and nudged his arm against her. “You sure?” 

Daphne looked at him, confused. 

He grinned and put her hand on his bicep. “Academic enough for you?”

“You’re just showing off,” she said, snatching her hand away from the utter solidity of his flesh beneath his sweatshirt. “It’s not that impressive, anyway.”

Ron’s phone beeped. 

“Ah, fuck, I’ve got to go,” he said as he shoved it back into his pocket. 

“Ok,” Daphne said and pretended she was looking for something earlier in her notebook. “Bye.” 

She couldn’t quite put her finger on what had crept underneath her skin. 

❦

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Works discussed in this chapter, including links (accessed May 17, 2020):
> 
> 1\. Édouard Manet, _[Olympia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympia_\(Manet\)#/media/File:%C3%89douard_Manet_-_Olympia_-_Mus%C3%A9e_d'Orsay,_Paris.jpg) _, 1863, oil on canvas, Musée d'Orsay, Paris.
> 
> 2\. The Musée d’Orsay has [a floorplan online.](https://www.musee-orsay.fr/en/tools/plan-salle.html?zsz=1&zs_sf=0&zs_r_14_peu=1&zs_r_14_w=105~tkardex%20106~tkardex%20107~tkardex%20108~tkardex%20109~tkardex%20110~tkardex%20111~tkardex%20112~tkardex%20&zs_mf=&zs_ah=&zs_rf=plan_mos&zs_sf=0&zs_send_x=&si_rech_col_repplan=Plan&zs_salle=All%26eacute%3Be+centrale+des+sculptures&L=1)
> 
> 3\. Paul Dubois, _[Narcisse](https://www.musee-orsay.fr/en/collections/index-of-works/notice.html?no_cache=1&nnumid=006465&cHash=b3391c0285) _, 1867, marble, Musée d'Orsay, Paris.
> 
> 4\. Mark Rothko, _[No. 11 (Yellow Center),](https://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2012/contemporary-art-evening-auction-n08900/lot.19.html) (scroll to Fig. 7)_, 1954, oil on canvas, Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, Iran. 
> 
> 5\. Claude Monet, _[Haystacks [series]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haystacks_\(Monet_series\)) _, 1890-1891, oil on canvas, various locations.
> 
> 6\. Francisco Goya, _[Los Caprichos](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_caprichos) _, 1797-1798, published as an album in 1799, aquatint and etching, multiple locations.
> 
> 7\. Carl van Loo, _[Venus Requesting Vulcan to Make Arms for Aeneas](https://hoodmuseum.dartmouth.edu/objects/2005.2) _, about 1735, oil on canvas, Hood Museum of Art, Hanover, New Hampshire.


	5. Chapter 5

_IX. Post-Impressionism_

Daphne had submitted the paper—more of a report, really—twelve hours before the deadline. But Saturday had gotten away from her, and by seven she was sprawled across Pansy’s bed, watching Blaise teach Draco how to blow smoke rings.

“I wouldn’t have washed my hair if I’d known,” Daphne said and pushed herself up. 

“Don’t be a baby,” Draco scoffed. “It’s not like we’re going anywhere good, so like, who cares?”

Pansy set down her eyebrow pencil and pivoted. “I’m curling your hair, then.” 

Daphne groaned. 

“You’ll wash it when you get home like, who cares,” Pansy said. 

She glared at Daphne and then started pushing her lip out. 

“Ugh, fine.” 

Pansy clapped and Draco coughed out, “You’re such a baby.” 

“I look better with a bob,” she snapped, pushing Daphne down onto the stool in front of her dressing table, “But you can’t take the south of the girl.” 

“Like Mrs. Parkinson would approve of Geoff, or,” Draco pointed to the small bag of coke, “that.” 

Pansy raised one eyebrow and shrugged. “Bless y’all.” She ran her fingers through Daphne’s hair, then set to work. 

She’d always been their doll, Daphne thought, staring into her own eyes in the mirror. She was the same age, but she’d always been younger. They’d grown up all over but after Andover, there wasn’t a question where they’d be going next. And now they were almost done with it all. Draco would go to law school and Blaise to Goldman and Pansy to Christie’s and she—she’d have to wait until grad school results came out, but she’d be here or somewhere else, or, if nothing worked, she’d be at the Met. They had two Greengrass wings.

It wasn’t like her family liked art. But it was a sound investment and a family tradition. And somehow she’d ended up loving it. 

“See, you look gorgeous,” Pansy said, kissing the top of her head. “Like a Victoria’s Secret model. With bangs.” 

Daphne rolled her eyes at her reflection. She looked like every blonde girl in tv, magazines, movies, porn. “I look boring.” 

“Yeah, but like, you need to get laid, boys suck, and you don’t know how to flirt, so this makes everything easier.” Draco licked along the edge of the rolling paper. 

“What is this, the anti-abstinence committee?” 

Daphne spun around on the stool. They exchanged glances.

“We’re going out; you haven’t slept with anyone since that thing with the rugby boy—”

“Greg.”

“And honestly, he looked like he’d just walked into a door, so—”

“Plus,” Pansy said, pulling Daphne to her feet and slinking one arm around her waist, “You don’t have any more homework to do.” 

“And you look hot, so, like, why waste it?” 

“Ugh, fine,” Daphne said, but it sounded weak to her own ears. 

“Good girl,” Draco said, glancing down at his phone. “We’re next on table at Domus.” He stood, tucked the joint into the chest pocket of his idiotically monogrammed shirt, and ran one hand through his electrically white hair. Like there was no question they'd come with him, just like they always had.

Blaise’s mouth curled but he didn’t say anything, just tucked Daphne into his side as they half-ran across campus in the crisp autumn night. Three games in, Daphne locked eyes with a tall dude in a snapback which was like, fine, and the sex was also like, fine. Around three, she’d gathered her hair into a messy bun, looked down at him, kissed his forehead, unguarded and gentle, and padded barefoot into the hall of whatever frat he lived in. 

She leaned against the wall to slip one shoe on, wobbling as she attempted the other. The glass of the composite was cold against her bare shoulders. 

Something down the hallway creaked, and panic shot through Daphne’s stomach. 

Not that there was like, anything wrong with anything, but she sprinted down the stairs, crashing down the landing and almost slipping on the tiled floor of the foyer—shit. It was. It was Gamma. 

And, as Daphne blinked through her dried contacts at the latest composite, hung at the bottom of the stairs, that was the frat that a certain R. Weasley was apparently the community service chairman of. 

But, like, whatever, Daphne thought three days later. She adjusted her ponytail after underlining Post-Impressionism in her notebook. It wasn’t like they gossiped about one night stands or whatever. Or that it mattered if they did. 

“Hey,” Ron said and slid into the seat beside her. He looked normal. He looked at her normally. 

“Hey,” Daphne said. “How was your write up experience?”

“Uh,” he said, and wedged his pen between his teeth. “Weird.” 

“Weird, how? Was our discussion inadequate?” 

He shook his head. “Too adequate.” 

Daphne pressed her lips together but she felt it bubbling out anyway, “Adequate can’t be modified like that, because something’s either adequate or not. There aren’t like, shades of adequacy.” 

“Yeah, maybe grammatically, but not like, metaphorically.”

“Ok,” Daphne said. She didn’t know what else to say to him. He was a really vague person. 

He squinted up at the screen. “Van Gogh was in _Dr. Who_.”

“In Dutch, it’s more like van Gock.”

“Van Cock,” he whispered, as Brooks began discussing the whirling cypress trees and stars, and Daphne had to bite her lip to keep quiet. 

❦

_hey you seemed to like van gogh and we didn’t even look at my favorite so google Kop van een skelet met brandende sigaret_

She put her phone on silent and flopped face down on her bed. 

_that’s cool_

Daphne allowed herself one keyboard smash. 

❦

_X. Primitivism_

“Smoking’s bad for you,” he said as he plopped into his seat. 

“I don’t like—” Daphne shook her head. “Here.” 

“Another drink? Are you bribing me, Miss Greengrass?” 

“What would I bribe you for?” Daphne said, watching as he sipped the hot chocolate. Round two. 

Ron swallowed, grinned, and leaned towards her. 

His eyes were frighteningly blue. Then something switched. 

“Sitting next to you, duh,” he said offhandedly, leaning back. 

Daphne pushed her pen into the central crease of her notebook. She was starting to think Ron Weasley had taken one too many pucks to the head. 

❦

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Works discussed in this chapter, including links (accessed May 23, 2020):
> 
> 1\. Vincent van Gogh, _[The Starry Night](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Van_Gogh_-_Starry_Night_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg) _, 1889, oil on canvas, Museum of Modern Art, New York.
> 
> 2\. Vincent van Gogh, _[Kop van een skelet met brandende sigaret](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skull_of_a_Skeleton_with_Burning_Cigarette) _, c. 1885-1886, oil on canvas, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.


	6. Chapter 6

_XI. Cubism_

Daphne arrived early for cubism. She’d read the Bois article and the Krauss chapter three times each and cubism still didn’t make any sense. It probably made less sense than when she'd started. Twentieth century bullshit, but like, maybe the chair would make it clearer. 

But somehow Ron was already there. And there were two coffee cups on his desk. 

“Good morning,” Daphne said and let a slide sheet flutter out of her fingers. 

“Oh, thanks,” he said, “I got here earlier than Jeff."

“Geoff.” 

“You know him?”

Daphne nodded and bent to unzip her bag.

“Well?”

“What?” 

Ron’s hand tightened on one of the two cups. “Do you know him well?”

“Uh,” Daphne said, “I mean, he’s a grad student in the department and he’s fucking my best friend but I don’t really like, hang out with him.”

He thrust the cup towards her. “Here.”

“Oh,” Daphne said, affecting surprise. At least he had a good memory for her coffee preferences. Even if his were still a mystery. His cup was unmarked. “Thank you.”

“I had time. We had a morning lift.” His damp hair curled around his ears. 

“Thrilling,” Daphne said and raised her eyebrows as she scanned the slide sheet. 

Ron smirked. “Not impressed?” 

Daphne ran her tongue along her teeth. “Picking things up and putting them down again isn’t very interesting.” 

“So no one’s ever thrown you over their shoulder and then down on a bed?” 

Daphne glared at the Picasso papier collé on the screen. She heard him huff a laugh as the chair read some Picasso quote in French. She would.

He bumped his elbow against hers at the end of class. 

“Study sesh this week?”

“Sesh, really?”

Ron shrugged. “For the midterm. It’s coming up.”

“Oh, I know,” Daphne said. She stood and smoothed the wool pleats of her skirt. “I’m down.”

Casual. Not like she’d booked her favorite study room weeks ago. 

❦

_**I could do the night before the exam after 7 or tuesday afternoon** _

_Borstal 413, 2-4 pm tuesday and 7-9 pm wednesday. I’ll summarize the readings from classes I-V, you do V-X._

**_yeah ok cool_**

❦

_XII. The Rise of Abstraction_

There were always questions at the end of lecture, but Daphne usually zoned out the various sycophantic attempts, but suddenly, Ron, the Ron that was sitting next to her, was saying something about, oh God, Malevich’s _Painterly Realism of a Football Player—Color Masses in the 4th Dimension._

“So if the painting’s meant to be abstract, why did he give it such a specific title?” 

“Actually, Malevich had something to say about this,” the chair said. “In the catalogue accompanying the first exhibition this painting was in, Malevich wrote, ‘In naming some of the paintings I do not wish to point out what form to seek in them, but I wish to indicate that real forms were approached in many cases as the ground for formless painterly masses from which a painterly picture was created, quite unrelated to nature.’”

She glanced up from her paper. “Which both illuminates and does not illuminate your question. Why was it the form of the football player specifically that inspired Malevich? Was it an effort to make his artwork more, for lack of better word, relatable? Or was there something else? We should take care not to become too invested in the symbolic potential of the title, firstly, because that title may have been a later addition, and secondly, because it could distract us from understanding the abstraction of Malevich’s work. But a fascinating question, and one that does not have an adequate exploration in the literature. You've hit upon a good paper topic.” 

Ron’s ears went pink. 

❦

The first study session wasn’t terrible. He’d actually prepared his summaries in advance—she’d considered texting him to remind him but didn’t want to be a micromanager and thus resigned herself—even if they were handwritten on the back of what looked like a lab report. And he’d found some quiz website that basically had all the slide id’s. 

She’d copied the notes for the class he missed. 

“Your handwriting is so neat,” Ron said. 

Daphne shrugged. “My grandmother.” 

Ron looked like he expected more, but she flipped to _A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte_ and waited. 

“Seurat,” he said, “Duh.” 

“And?” 

“ _Afternoon on the Grand Jatte_ , eighteen eighty three or four, oil on canvas, large divisionist painting demonstrating Seurat’s experimentations in optical color mixing, subject matter an exploration of leisure among various classes of Parisians and whether it’s a good thing or not is a matter of debate given the weirdly robotic nature of the anatomy.”

“You’ve come far, young padawan. And it’s 1884.”

Ron laughed. “Don’t Obi-Wan me, nerd. Also, I’m totally not the Anakin in this relationship.” 

He clicked to the next slide. 

“Oh, fuck Rousseau,” Daphne groaned. 

“You like the mustache?”

“Oh my God, shut up, you know what I mean—”

❦

Daphne tapped on the window in the door of Borstal 413. The couple inside broke apart. 

“Hi, sorry,” she said as she opened the door. “I booked this room.” She didn’t feel sorry for them though, like. Go make out somewhere else. The library was the library. 

She’d barely set her bag on the table when Ron burst through the door. 

“Hey, sorry I’m late.” 

Daphne checked her watch. “You’re not.” 

“I brought snacks,” he said, dumping two plastic baggies of goldfish, a Monster, half of a Hershey’s bar, and cool ranch Doritos onto the table. Daphne fought the urge to wrinkle her nose. “And my mom sent Ginny some cookies.” 

He pulled a napkin out of his jacket pocket and set it on the table. Daphne leaned forward and unfolded it and beheld two lopsided, squished … snickerdoodles?

“Wow,” she said. “Looks good.”

His face fell a little. 

“It probably tastes good, though,” she said, breaking off a piece. She didn’t really want to eat this squashed-ass cookie but being a total bitch wasn’t going to be productive. 

Ron took the other whole cookie and bit into it. He watched her chew and swallow.

It was fucking amazing. Of course it was. His mom probably wore gingham aprons and had a favorite casserole recipe and wrote handwritten notes for their lunchboxes. 

“Wow,” she said. But it was a soft one this time. 

“I know,” he said, popping the rest into his mouth. “My mom’s amazing.” 

Daphne opened her computer and found where they’d stopped. “You’d have to be to raise seven kids without losing your mind.” 

Ron leaned against the table. “You been googling me?”

“The Weasley dynasty is notorious at this school; I don’t need to google you.” She opened her notebook. 

When she emptied her bag in her bedroom, she found the other half of the snickerdoodle, wrapped neatly in its white paper napkin. She set it on her desk, got into her pajamas, then sat cross legged on her bed and ate it with her eyes closed. 

Cinnamon was such a warm flavor. 

❦

_XIII. Midterm Exam_

The midterm was easy. The slides were all the most obvious ones. One of the essays had demanded a rehash of the close looking exercise, and the other had been a pick-one-of-three, which, clearly, she’d chosen the French Rev. 

Ron gave her a thumbs up as she headed out the door five minutes before time was called. 

❦

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Works discussed in this chapter, including links (accessed May 23, 2020):
> 
> 1\. Pablo Picasso, _[Man with a Hat](https://www.harvardartmuseums.org/collections/object/299935?position=51)_ , 1912, papier collé: charcoal, graphite, gray wash, laid paper and newsprint on white laid paper, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge. 
> 
> 2\. Georges Seurat, _[A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Sunday_Afternoon_on_the_Island_of_La_Grande_Jatte)_ , 1884, oil on canvas, The Art Institute, Chicago.
> 
> 3\. Henri Rousseau, _[The Dream](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dream_\(Rousseau_painting\)) _, 1910, oil on canvas, Museum of Modern Art, New York.
> 
> 4\. Kazimir Malevich, _[Painterly Realism of a Football Player—Color Masses in the 4th Dimension](https://www.artic.edu/artworks/207293/painterly-realism-of-a-football-player-color-masses-in-the-4th-dimension)_ , 1915, oil on canvas, The Art Institute, Chicago.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, this has way less art history than the other chapters. I got distracted.

_XIV. Art in the Time of Revolution, Part II_

“Happy today?” 

Daphne didn’t bother hiding a smile. “Revolutions get the people going.” 

“Revolutions get you going,” Ron said with a laugh. “I’m surprised you don’t study poli sci.” 

“You disappoint me, Weasley. Poli sci is the major for people who don’t understand enough math to major in econ and or conservative bureaucrats who might advocate for conservative reforms if they’re feeling wild.”

Ron grimaced. “That was harsh.”

Daphne turned her head towards him and said with a calculated balance of levity and disgust, “My ex is a poli sci major.”

His mouth went strangely wide—not quite a smile and not quite a grimace—and he nodded a few times. “I mean, it’s accurate. My brother is literally that dick.” 

Daphne shrugged. “Greengrass women have always had the gift of sharp but accurate tongues.” 

“I bet most of them weren’t big fans of the guillotine, though.” 

“Oh, no, Ron, that’s so eighteenth century. Now it’s guns.” 

“And triangles,” he said, gesturing towards Lissitzky’s poster. 

“That’s the fascinating thing—can political art be abstract? Does it work? Like, what do you think that image is telling you? Is it clear what the political directive—” 

But then the chair started talking about the differences between the Julian and Gregorian calendrical systems (honestly?). Daphne subsided. 

❦

“Oy, Greengrass!” 

Pansy’s head whipped around faster. “Oh my God,” she hissed, digging her nails into Daphne’s arm. “Weasley incoming.” 

Daphne pivoted slowly. 

Ron looked her up and down. Which was really not ideal, since she and Pansy had just come from some asinine spinning in the dark class, and her bangs were plastered to her forehead and her face was already flushed, and she was strapped into one of Pansy’s fashion sports bras, a decision she’d regretted thirty seconds into the first Tiësto song, and the workout must have been harder than she thought because she felt like she was going to puke.

“Hey,” he said. 

“Hi,” Daphne said. Pansy dug her nails a little deeper. She was so helpful. 

“I thought you thought ‘picking stuff up and putting it down’ was boring.” He cocked his head to one side and like, pretended to stretch. 

“It is.” 

“We were just at a spin class,” Pansy said. 

“Are you the best friend?” He seemed genuinely curious. 

Pansy flicked her eyes to Daphne. She thought he was an idiot.

“The one who’s fucking Jeff?” 

A strangled sound escaped Daphne. 

“Modernism must be super boring if that’s a subject of discussion,” Pansy said with a little grin as she drove her nails into Daphne’s flesh. 

Ron glanced down. “Didn’t realize it was a state secret.” Pansy released her arm, and Daphne crossed it behind her back. 

“Hey, so,” he said after a moment, “There’s a thing on Saturday, if you’re free.”

“A thing?” 

Pansy had pulled out her phone and was texting. Draco, probably, Daphne thought with a surge of irritation. 

“Yeah, like ice skating.”

“Look, Weasley,” Pansy said, glancing up from her phone and fixing him with a sharp stare. “If you’re asking Daphne to Gamma’s semi-formal, just ask her. She doesn’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.” 

Ron held up his hands. “Ok, sue me, yep, semi, Gamma, ice skating.” 

Daphne crossed her arms. She could have guessed it was a semi. But was this like, a date? Did he just not know any girls? Was this a desperation thing, asking the weird girl from his class?

“What time are you picking her up?” 

“Uh—”

“Don't get distracted by her boobs!” Pansy snapped her fingers in front of his face, but she was too short to reach his eyes, so her hand ended up somewhere in the midst of his chest and a giggle burst out of Daphne and then she was laughing so hard she had to put her hands over her mouth. 

“What time does it start?” Pansy asked with a modicum of patience. 

“Uh, the bus leaves the house at two,” Ron stammered. 

“Great, we live at 10 Maple, so you’ll be at ours at 1:30 and you can walk to Gamma together.”

Ron nodded. Daphne, one hand still over her mouth, nodded back at him.

“Ok, good job, team,” Pansy said and rolled her eyes. 

“Cool. See you in class.” 

He tried to run one hand through his hair but it got tangled with his headband. 

Daphne’s face hurt from laughing. 

❦

_XV. Bauhaus_

“Jesus, your friend is scary.” 

Ron dropped into his seat and shot a sideway glance at her. 

He seemed normal. Daphne twisted her ring around her finger. She couldn’t ask him if it was a date (something Pansy, and later, Draco and Blaise, were convinced of) before a lecture on Kandinsky’s pseudoscientific color theory, the egotistical Gropius, and early German juicing. The contradictory utopian glory of the Bauhaus. Highly romantic. 

“Why did you bring up Geoff?” 

“I didn’t know it was like, a big deal.” Ron flipped to a clean page in his notebook. She couldn’t believe she was even considering going on a non-date with someone who wrote on wide ruled paper. “You said it like everyone knew it.” 

“I mean, like, we know it. But no one talks about it,” Daphne said. 

“That’s weird.”

“It’s not weird.” 

“It is weird. Like, who’s with someone and doesn't want to talk about it? Is Geoff married or something?” Ron glanced over his shoulder at Geoff, who was chatting with some willowy freshmen because of course he was.

Daphne uncapped her pen and wrote the date. It was wrong. She crossed it out. This was all getting confusing. Ron didn’t speak the same language; all those flippant and glossy and bitchy things that they’d been snapping at each other for the last eight years sounded strange and leaden in his mouth.

“I mean, I was kind of joking about it, but—”

“Look,” Daphne interrupted, “it’s technically against department policy and as much as Pansy pretends that she doesn't care, she doesn’t want Geoff to get kicked out or defunded. I mean, he sucks. But like, what can you do?” 

“Uh,” Ron said, “You could point out how much he sucks? And how she could have a nice boyfriend who doesn’t have to keep her secret?”

“Yeah, um, good luck with that,” Daphne said. Her throat hurt. 

“I’m sorry if she was mad at you.”

“Oh, she wasn’t. Your—” Daphne pursed her lips, unsure of what to call Ron’s offer—“invitation was enough of a distraction.”

“Yeah?” Ron glanced at her and then away. “Are you still on for Saturday?”

“Yeah.” 

She couldn’t ask him. That would be weird. 

“Cool.”

The stupid question kept thrumming through her head. She could barely absorb any of the lecture and just wrote down the random words her brain let her hear. Good thing she’d already aced the chair’s Bauhaus seminar. It didn’t really matter. But the question mattered less. 

He’d shoved his notebook back into his backpack when Daphne saw her arm shoot out and rest on his. 

Ron glanced up. As you would if a random girl just grabbed your arm.

“I, uh—”

Just ask if it’s a date. Or not. 

“I don’t know how to skate.” 

Oh, good job, she thought. Really relevant.

Ron’s face broke into a grin. “Oh, that’s even better.” 

She regained control of her arm enough to pull it back. “I hate things I’m not good at,” Daphne said as a warning. 

“That’s ok,” he said and stood, “Now I’ve got the higher ground, Kenobi.” 

Daphne waited for thirty seconds when he must have been out of the auditorium, and then allowed herself to rest her forehead on her notebook. Just for ten seconds. 

❦

“You look precious,” Blaise said. He pinched her cheek before Daphne could slap his hand away. “The curls are a cute touch. Just enough to look hot, but you’re not trying too hard.” 

Pansy shrugged. “She asked for them this time. So she clearly wants him.”

Daphne blushed. “I don’t even know if it’s a date.” 

Draco glanced up from the couch. “Have fun on the gross school bus.”

“You’re just jealous that a certain someone didn’t ask you,” Blaise half-sang and flopped himself on top of Draco’s legs. “Don’t spoil Daphne’s party.” 

“Besides,” Pansy said, straddling the sofa arm and ruffling Draco’s hair, “at least Daphne’s talked to her crush in the last week, not just stalked his instagram.” 

Draco groaned. Daphne felt a pang and bent down to kiss his forehead. He wiped it off and glared at her. 

“I’ll report who Potter brings, obviously.” 

“Send pictures,” Draco demanded. Blaise jabbed him in the ribs. “I don’t care, I have to know!”

“How am I supposed to take stalker photos of Potter’s date?”

“She needs her entire brain to act normal,” Pansy said but wrinkled her nose and blew Daphne a kiss. “She doesn’t have time for your espionage.” 

The doorbell rang. 

“Shit, he’s here!” Blaise hissed. “Everyone act normal.”

“Shut up, Mrs. Bennet,” Draco said, pulling his phone back out.

Blaise beat her to the door. “Hi,” he said in his most charming voice. “I’m Blaise.” 

Daphne elbowed him out of the way. “Hi, let’s go.” 

“Hi,” Ron said. He was wearing a flannel. It looked really soft. But—right. She was going to have to focus. 

“Do you want to come in?” Blaise asked.

“They don’t have time,” Pansy yelled back. “Leave now, idiots in love.” 

“Oh my God,” Daphne muttered, hustling away from the porch and praying Ron followed. Pansy was getting her back now. Revenge served cold and all that. 

He was by her side and they walked in silence for long enough that Daphne started to panic that they wouldn’t have anything to talk about outside of class. She always had more art facts, but she knew that those weren’t necessarily of high interest to him but then she didn’t even know what he majored in or— 

“Was that Draco Malfoy on your couch?” 

“What?” Then her brain caught up. “Draco’s one of my roommates. We went to highschool together.”

“I thought you were from New York,” Ron said. He had his hands in his pockets. “Wasn’t his dad that senator from Florida?”

“Yeah,” Daphne said. That senator from Florida who had links to the KKK and the cult leader who'd murdered Potter's parents. That senator.

“So,” he said. Apparently this indicated a complete question. 

“Oh, it was boarding school. And he hasn’t talked to his dad since the trial.” 

She had to hurry to keep up with his casual loping. 

Ron slowed his pace. 

There was another silence. Daphne bit her lip. They still had at least five minutes to get to Gamma. 

“So, do you think you passed the midterm?” 

Ron looked confused. “Uh, yeah, studying with you was really helpful.” 

Daphne nodded. Good. She had held up her end of this bargain. 

He looked like he wanted to say something else, but kept stopping himself. 

They arrived at his frat in silence, but the general commotion was enough that no one noticed. Daphne was surrounded by literal giants yelling and cracking beers—public intoxication was definitely illegal—and then Ron put one hand on the small of her back and steered her onto the bus. 

“Go to the back,” he said, leaning close to her ear. Daphne squeezed herself down the aisle, trying not to stiffen because he wasn’t moving his hand and that wasn’t unpleasant but it was mildly unexpected and also seemed like he was asserting that she was his—date or invitee or whatever. And oh God, there was Conrad or whatever, sucking face with Cho Chang, who was the American Youth Poet, so like, ok. Conrad broke away from Cho for air, recognized Daphne, and winked. Daphne smiled slightly and kept moving. Situation avoided.

“Ron!” Potter banged the seat in front of him. Daphne assumed they were meant to sit there, so she slid into the sticky brown seat. Ron settled in next to her, though most of his legs cascaded into the aisle, and introduced her to Harry. 

Fighting the urge to say something along the lines of _I know your shoe size because my best friend whose father was partially responsible for the racially-motivated murder of your parents is obsessed with you,_ Daphne smiled. 

“I’m glad you could come,” Harry said, pushing his glasses up his nose. “Finally get to meet you.” 

“Finally?” 

Ron coughed and looked down the bus. “Hermione’s here!” 

A tiny black woman shoved her way through the clog of hockey bros, waving frantically at Ron and Harry as she joked with the boys. “Do they think this is the party?” She half-shouted, kneeling on the seat next to Harry. “We can’t leave until they all sit down.”

“Herm, you’re not managing anymore,” Harry said and poked her in the ribs. 

“Idiots,” she said fondly. “And thank God.” She turned to Daphne and stuck out one hand. “Hermione Granger.” 

“Wait, like, the Hermione Granger?” Daphne stuttered as Hermione shook her hand. Like, the Hermione Granger who’d been accepted to every Ivy, interned for Obama, and worked with Malala on girls’ education. She’d given two Ted talks. She was writing a book. Daphne tried to stop her brain from short circuiting. And she was friends with Ron Weasley. 

Hermione shot a glance at Ron. “Uh, yeah. Did Ron not tell you we were friends?” 

“I, um, we mostly talk about the course,” Daphne said. So Ron was friends with not only Harry Potter, but also Hermione Granger. He seemed so … normal. But right now he was being kind of weird and not looking at her. 

“Modern art, right?” Hermione asked. “Ron didn’t do any of his distribs freshman year, even though I tried to advise them that it would be more practical, but like, now he’s doing his thesis and taking all these random classes and doing a varsity season, but what can you do?” 

“Uh,” Daphne said. This was all unexpected. Obviously Ron wasn’t a total idiot. But this was like a lot more than he’d let on. She glanced at him. 

“Beer?” he said, handing her a cold can. 

“Want to shotgun them?” 

“Absolutely not, Harry James,” Hermione said, cracking her beer open before Harry had gotten his id out. “Go, go, quick, open it before they make you shotgun.” Daphne complied. She hadn’t tasted shitty beer since middle school. 

“Sorry,” Ron said, at Daphne’s moue of distaste. 

“It’s fine,” she said. She was still processing this friend triangle. Or was it a love triangle? It seemed like Hermione was with Harry—shit, she needed to text Draco, but this was not an ideal situation for that—but like, maybe they were poly? 

The rest of the bus ride passed in a blur. At the ice rink, Hermione marched her off the bus and to the women’s restroom. 

“So,” Hermione said, glancing at Daphne in the mirror as they washed their hands. 

Honestly, though, did all of them think that was a complete question? Was this a middle class thing? Daphne felt immediately bad at that thought, but what was this? 

“Are you, um, dating Harry?” Daphne blurted. Draco had texted her seventeen times. 

“What?” Hermione said and then cracked up. 

“Ron?” Daphne squeaked.

“Oh my God, no,” Hermione said through tears of laughter. She kept cackling as Daphne dried her hands with seven shitty paper towels.

“Absolutely not,” she said finally. “I’m a lesbian.” 

Daphne blinked and nodded. “So you’re not—” Hermione raised an eyebrow.

“I haven’t come out publicly, because like, I haven’t met someone I’ve wanted to subject to the like, whole shitshow, but,” she shrugged, “I’m not hiding anything.” 

“Oh, I didn’t mean—”

Hermione fixed Daphne with an intense gaze. “Anyway, that’s irrelevant right now. What are your intentions towards Ron?”

“My—intentions?” 

“Yeah, like, what is this?” She waved one hand in the air. “We don’t have much time before they get suspicious. But I can’t just like let, a rando who’s friends with the spawn of Lucius Malfoy date one of my best friends.” 

Daphne was super fucking confused now. “Is this a date?” she whispered. 

“Oh, no,” Hermione said and closed her eyes. “You’re _both_ dumb-smart.” 

“Um, what?” 

“Ok,” she said, and, taking Daphne’s hand, dragged her back to the ice rink. Daphne felt like she’d walked into a parallel universe. 

“These skates are so shitty,” Harry said with glee as he stomped on his skates towards the rink. “Like old times.”

Hermione rolled her eyes at his back and pushed Daphne towards Ron. “I don’t know why none of you brought your actual skates.” 

“That’s part of the fun,” Ron said, handing Daphne a pair of hideous tan skates. “You’re like a nine, right?” 

She blinked and sat down. This was all getting to be a little much. They’d just like, absorbed her into their own weird energy and she’d been in her little Blaise-Draco-Pansy bubble for so long and now Ron knew her shoe size? And he was like, kneeling between her legs?

“Do you just like, pull these off?” he asked, picking up her foot and examining her Frye boot. She nodded and her throat went a little dry. 

“It’s supposed to feel too tight,” he said as he laced up her skates. Daphne stared at the top of his head, at the strands of copper among the auburn, and felt slowly mesmerized watching his fingers yank at the dirty laces. Even his fingers had freckles. 

“Are you ok? You’re kinda quiet.” She was about to answer when he pulled her to her feet and she wobbled, half-falling into his arms. 

“Oh, totally,” Daphne managed. “These are the most disgusting shoes I’ve ever had on my feet.” 

Good, stay cool, Greengrass. Very chill. 

“One, they’re skates, and two, you’ve never been bowling?” 

He put one arm under hers and she wobbled to the rink. This was already a disaster. She needed a vodka tonic and to take off these ridiculous shoes and to get far, far away from whoever thought it was a good and fun and wholesome idea to allow the hockey team’s frat to have an ice skating semi. Clearly a sadist. 

She hesitated at the edge of the rink. Harry was skating backwards and Hermione was chasing him—not with the grace he had, but with a determination that spurred her to catch him. They crashed into the wall together, laughing. 

“Yeah, we’re not doing that,” Ron said, “Don’t worry.” 

He stepped backwards onto the ice, and, sliding his one hand down her arm, grabbed her hand and said, “C’mon. The worst that will happen is that you fall. And you get bruised. But I’ll try to save you.” 

“A whole white knight of my own,” she managed, and put one foot on the ice. 

“Ok, fine, that was cheesy,” Ron said. Then he smirked. “But you liked it.” 

“I mostly liked the part about not falling down,” Daphne said and put her other foot down. 

Ron reached forward and grabbed her other hand off the partition. 

Now they were undeniably holding hands. 

Maybe this was a date. 

He gently pulled her forwards and then they were off, gliding around until Daphne remembered to panic because this was not natural, and she’d stiffen and they’d lurch a little, but then Ron would grin and say some completely absurd thing—

“David was woke and empire is the best form of government,” he tried, and Daphne forgot to think about her legs because that was so incandescently incorrect— 

“Mondrian’s utopian ideas succeeded,” was another one.

“Cubism shows stuff from multiple perspectives,” he’d say and grin.

After a loop around the rink with no incidents, he stopped near the exit and said, “You don’t have to keep skating.” 

But that meant he’d let go of her hands.

“I could suffer through a few more.”

“Cool.” 

She hadn’t seen that flavor of smile before, and she wanted that one, always. 

❦

There was pizza. Daphne watched Ron whiz past with Harry and Hermione. Hermione half-grilled her again (cue shock that Draco wasn’t also a racist; “He’s kind of a dick sometimes, but like, he has a good heart,” Daphne said over her orange soda. “His dad’s the shitty one.”) then melted away when Ron crashed down next to Daphne and they sat together in a nice silence for a while. She had so many questions for him, but she was too full and content to ask anything coherent. She kept yawning on the bus ride and then Ron started yawning and they passed the yawn back and forth, smiling each time it came back to them. 

He walked her home and waited on the porch until she’d shut the door. 

Luckily, everyone else was out, so they didn’t tease her as she ran up the stairs to Blaise’s window to watch him walk down the street, his grey flannel tinted orange by the streetlights. 

❦

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Works discussed in this chapter, including links (accessed May 23, 2020):
> 
> 1\. El Lissitzky, _[Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beat_the_Whites_with_the_Red_Wedge)_ , 1919, lithographed poster, multiple locations (including the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and the Art Institute in Chicago).


	8. Chapter 8

_XVI. Dada_

Radio silence since Saturday. It was Tuesday. That was—Daphne resisted the urge to count it out on her fingers and set down the tally marks in her notebook, just under the seven question marks that had ended her thoughts on Critical Theory’s discussion on Bhabha—three days. More like two, two and half. 

She was that horrible little head spinning at the center of Höch’s collage. Tossed into like, the random nonsense of the last cultural epoch of what it all meant. 

Or really, what it all didn’t mean. 

Wasn’t that the point of Dada?

She scribbled out the tally marks. 

The lights dimmed at 10:01 and he still wasn’t there. She couldn’t text him now. But he was edging closer to the three absences.

Daphne wasn’t his mom. 

He could get his grade bumped down if he wanted to; she would have tried. 

Daphne sketched one of Hugo Ball’s horrible paper claws— _animal? Rage?_ —but that was probably too symbolic for them. The maw of nothingness was more of a thing. If it was a thing. 

A rustle caught her attention and there he was, hunched over and trying to edge his way past the kids at the end of the row. 

Paper cups in his hands. 

Idiot, Daphne thought, and moved her coat from his seat. 

He grinned at her in the darkness and pressed a coffee into her hand. 

“Well,” Ron said, casting a scathing glance at _Cadeau,_ the final image the chair had discussed. “That’s alright for some people.” 

Daphne hummed. She couldn’t be bought off with a single coffee. “Too complicated for you?”

Ron shrugged. “It’s kind of stupid.”

“You weren’t convinced by the chair's paean?” 

“It’s not even old,” he said. “It’s not real.” 

Daphne snapped her notebook shut. “Boy, you’re really going to hate conceptualism.” 

Ron yawned. “See, even you don’t have a good argument in its favor.” 

“I mean,” Daphne said, “It's just teasing surrealism for next time, and it’s not a patch on like, Oppenheim.” 

“Paul or Alan?”

“Meret?” 

“Oh,” Ron said and hauled his backpack onto his lap. He usually got up and left immediately, but now he was staying here, being cryptic. 

“Who are Paul and Alan?” 

“You have lunch plans?” 

Daphne shook her head. Who the fuck were Paul and Alan, though? And why was he late? And what kind of fucking drink did he drink? 

She was going to have to make a list of all her questions. Or she’d forget something important. 

❦

He didn’t talk a lot. Like, he really didn’t talk a lot. 

Oh God, they were going to the dining hall. Daphne swallowed and handed her id over, like she hadn’t in three years, because like, who ate at the fucking dining hall when their idiotic meal plan worked at restaurants in town or even at the university-operated cafés.

“It’s all you can eat,” Ron said suddenly. Like he could read her mind. Daphne snatched her id back, flashing a grin at the bewildered kid running the machine. 

She’d just paid seventeen dollars for all you can eat pale cantaloupe and scrambled eggs made from concentrate.

“I know,” she said. “I also attend this school.” 

Ron snorted. 

Dino chicken nuggets, though. And a bowl of spinach for fiber. 

Ron set a fucking tray down on their table. She glanced around to check who’d noticed this latest faux pas. She flicked her eyes away from the table filled with trays and sports humans to her left. It was still weird. 

“Knew you’d find something you’d like,” he said, settling into the chair and gulping some electric blue drink. “Wait, wait, you only have ketchup?”

Daphne raised an eyebrow. She’d spent hours perfecting that. 

He was up and back with some tiny bowl of— 

“Ranch. Trust me.” 

Daphne looked at the shiny surface of the dressing, which was definitely, definitely not organic and probably ninety percent hydrogenated corn.

Ron shrugged and tucked into his lasagna. “Your loss.” 

“I’m not like, scared,” Daphne said and dunked a brontosaurus head first. 

It wasn’t bad. 

Maybe it was even. Good. 

Maybe. 

Ron grinned at her silence. 

“Alan? And—?”

“Paul,” Ron said, “Friend of Einstein. Chemist. Escaped the Nazis. Came up with the deductive-nomological model.” 

Daphne blinked. “The what?” 

“Alan,” he continued, as though she hadn’t asked a question, “does dope shit with signal processing.” 

Daphne picked up a piece of spinach and studied it. 

“Not really my thing, but,” Ron shrugged again and picked up one of his three pieces of garlic bread. “Cool.”

Daphne swallowed the astringent lump of spinach. “What like, is your thing?”

He shrugged. “This and that.” 

“No,” Daphne said, and tapped a nail on the table. “What is your thing? Seriously.” 

“Uh, well.” 

“Not a complete sentence,” Daphne snapped. Why was he so fucking like, shy or something? He wasn’t meeting her eyes. 

He glanced up at her, reddened, then glanced away. 

“What, are you like an English major who writes A/B/O fic in your spare time? It can’t be that weird or embarrassing.” 

“What’s—”

“Nope,” Daphne said, “What’s your thing?” 

He was actually blushing now. It would have been precious if it wasn’t so annoying. 

“Math,” he croaked. 

Daphne’s hand twitched, upsetting her water glass all over the table. 

“Math?” she hissed, yanking a handful of biodegradable napkins out of the dispenser and slapping them onto the table. “You think _math_ is weird and embarrassing?” 

Ron rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s not … cool.” 

Daphne pushed the sodden mass to the edge of the table. She’d deal with that later. 

“Math.” She glared at him. “Honestly.” 

He went for the second garlic bread. 

“Hermione said you’re doing a thesis,” she said. “Is this a math thesis?” 

Ron shrugged. 

She felt like she’d handled this wrong now, but she couldn’t put her finger on what to say that would draw him out again. 

“So is that like, solving problems or coming up with new—er—theories?” 

No one she knew did math. Blaise did spreadsheets. She was way out of her depth, but there was something so fragile about him and this math thing. 

He glanced up and then back down at his bread. “Game theory.” 

“I don’t know what that means,” Daphne said. She attempted to imbue it with genuine curiosity. 

“It’s boring,” he said around a lump of bread. 

“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” she snapped. God, she was turning into Ariadne faster that she’d hoped. He swallowed. 

“Like, how games work.” Ron paused. “It’s all math. It’s … easier. Easier than people think.” 

Daphne drew her head back. “Sure. Game theory is so easy.” 

“If you move things in a certain way, there’s only a certain number of actions that can follow. Whether that’s theoretical or physical.” He finished the blue drink. “It’s logic. But then sometimes, it doesn’t seem logical, but it usually is when you grind down to it.” 

Daphne hummed. 

That seemed to irritate him because he and continued, “It’s simple. I’m not doing theoretical physics or neurosurgery. I just move things around until I find the patterns.” 

“I mean, history is the same,” Daphne said, forgetting to be annoyed, “finding patterns from like, the trash heap of history.” She forgave herself the dramatic Benjamin allusion. 

“That’s messier,” Ron said and wrinkled his nose. 

“And you don’t like mess?” Daphne laughed. “You play hockey.” 

Ron stared at her. 

“I’m surprised you still have all your teeth.” 

“Do I, though?” he said with a wink. 

“You had a black eye.”

His face grew serious. “The eye wasn’t hockey.” 

“Oh?” Daphne held her breath. 

His eyes were so blue and so intense. It was almost painful to be pinned down under the fluorescent lights. Her hands pressed against the damp plastic laminate.

And then they flicked past her and something shifted, and then Harry was slapping his head and had squeezed himself into the banquette next to Daphne and things were all different and loud. 

She felt like every answer he gave her spawned another ten questions. 

Like that rabbit fractal thing. 

❦

_XVII. Surrealism_

“Meret,” she said, as though they hadn’t not talked since Harry had carted him off after Tuesday's lunch. That was another two days. Or a quarter of a day and a whole day and then like, what was 10 am? A sixth? An eighth? 

“Oppenheim,” he replied. 

“Breton called it Le Déjeuner en fourrure,” she said. 

He tapped the eraser end of his pencil against the slide sheet. “Object?” 

“Her title’s better, obviously.” Daphne wrinkled her nose and stuck her tongue out a little. “Breton was a dick.” 

Ron laughed. A proper laugh that rolled out of him and had heads flipping back towards them. 

“You,” he said, and pointed at her, “think a lot of artists are dicks.” 

“Because they are,” she said and wound the end of her ponytail around her index finger. 

❦

The weekend was agony. She was sick of Pansy’s needling and Draco’s snarky quips and Blaise’s sympathetic glances. It was a week, seven days, since like, the actual non-date thing, and he’d been so normal and like—

Daphne groaned and rolled over to press her face into the back of the couch. She groaned again, muffled by the pillows. 

“Babe?” she heard vaguely. She smelled Blaise before she felt him settle on the couch’s arm and run one hand along her head. He scratched her scalp. Some of the frustration seeped away. 

“Have you talked?” 

She turned and blinked up at him. “Talked about what?” 

Blaise’s eyelids fluttered. “You’re not that stupid. This—” he waved one hand over her, “is weird and annoying. I can’t handle you and Draco pining.” 

“I’m not pining,” Draco snapped from where he was sprawled upside-down in the wing chair. “I’m too hot to pine.” He tapped one heel against the wall and buried himself back in his Melville. 

“Right, so you’re both deluded,” Blaise said, smacking a kiss on Daphne’s head and heading back to the kitchen. 

“Other people are pining for me,” Draco said. “And that’s the tea.” 

Blaise must have heard that, because suddenly ABBA grew louder. 

Daphne squeezed her eyes shut until she saw the dancing worms. 

❦

**hey my sorority is having a thing tonight if you’re free**

She threw her phone down and pressed her fist to her mouth. Pansy was so stupid. Blaise was stupid. They had no idea that this was going to make her throw up. 

“I can’t believe you didn’t ask him until like, what, three hours before it starts?” Pansy said.

“I’m not asking him, not like, ask-asking,” Daphne hissed. “It’s only if he’s free. Which he’s probably not.” 

Blaise put the tweezers down. 

“What did you say?” 

He unlocked her phone and sighed. “This is a really lovely invitation, Daph.” 

“Jesus,” Pansy said, as Blaise shoved it towards her. “Oh, Jesus,” she said after reading it. 

“A double Jesus?” Draco asked, shoving his head into the room. “What’s happening?” 

“Daphne is actually stupid,” Pansy said, clacking through her lipsticks. “And Ron has only made her stupider.”

Draco’s face fell but he adopted a nonchalant voice. “And thus ends a three year tradition of bringing me to semi.”

Daphne exhaled through her nose. “Babe, you’re still my date. I only asked him because these two idiots wouldn’t shut up.”

Pansy quirked an eyebrow. “I mean, I guess having your mom on the national exec board entitles you to two semi dates.” 

Draco wiggled in the doorway. “I need more tape.” 

“ABC is such a dumb theme,” Pansy said as the trashbag crunched around her. “It’s the same thing every year.”

“So much waste, too,” Blaise said. “Like, these plates are useless now.” 

He’d somehow managed to make paper plates look regal. It was the ruff, Daphne decided, and applied more deodorant. Trashbags were hot. Not sexy hot. Sweaty hot. 

“You didn’t tell him it was ABC,” Pansy said to her own reflection. 

“He’s not coming, so like, it doesn’t matter.” 

“You’re shooting yourself in the foot before this has even become a thing.” 

Daphne bared her teeth at Blaise. They were all so fucking annoying and she didn’t really want to go dance in a trashbag to Carly Rae Jepsen while being crushed between DFMOs for a fourth year in a row. But you had to go or you got fined because that was like, bringing down the house average or some shit. 

Daphne had cared once, when her mother had driven up for rush and curled her hair and made sure she’d practiced her lines regarding her hobbies and her life goals and her reasons for wanting to join Greek life, and Pansy had always been much better at that shit anyway. 

He flicked her in the nose—accidentally making contact—and tears rushed into her eyes. 

“Ow,” she said. 

“Fuck, I’m sorry,” Blaise said, batting her hands away from her nose. “There, there, nothing a little concealer won’t fix.” 

Daphne sniffled. He straddled her and tilted her head up, dabbing her pale concealer around her nose.

“Why are we getting ready so early?” 

Pansy dropped her phone on her dressing table. She swiveled around and stared at Daphne.

“Daph, we’ve pregamed every single semi at Domus for the past three years. That’s like,” she paused, a wrinkle appearing between her brows, “at least ten semis.”

Daphne glared back. “I should be working on my thesis.” 

“You were in the library all morning. That’s enough.” 

“My statement of purpose.” 

“Yeah, well, you’re already in a trash bag.” 

“Plus,” Blaise said, tilting her head up so she was forced to stare into his eyes, “If you really don’t care, you can find someone else to hook up with.”

Daphne didn’t move. She didn’t want to push at the edges of that discomfort. 

He didn’t text her back before they left, or when they were at Domus where, thank God, they were the only people because it was five-thirty in the afternoon, and Draco finally got to control the soundtrack because Terrence wasn’t there—and he played the stupidest sad dance songs until Blaise sat on him and scrolled through his playlists until he found SUmmER ~2011*~*~ which meant a lot of yelling along to vintage Pitbull—“surprisingly not problematic,” was Blaise’s panted commentary in between songs. 

He still hadn’t texted her when they were on the broad white porch. She silenced her phone—because like, that was over, then—and shoved it into the side of her bra. 

At that vaguely tragic stage of the night where there were five couples drifting around the edges of the floor, Daphne bailed. Blaise collapsed next to her on one of the sofas in the front room. 

“Draco’s gone, ditto Pans,” he said, “Geoff texted, but I don’t know where Draco went.” 

Daphne sipped the lukewarm water he’d given her. She checked her phone. Still nothing. Dumb knife in the heart. Wretchedly idiotic. Her mouth tasted like whiskey. 

“Hey, hey.” Blaise laced his fingers between hers. “Don’t be sad. He probably didn’t charge his phone. It doesn’t mean anything, necessarily.” 

“Yeah, but what if it does,” Daphne shot back. “What if he just wants to be friends and I’ve made it weird or he needs help passing this class.” 

Blaise squeezed her hand. 

And then front door open and in walked Ron Fucking Weasley. 

He blinked at Daphne, glanced down to her hand in Blaise’s, and turned around and walked right out the door. 

Daphne blinked at the door. 

“What the fuck are you waiting for?” Blaise pried his hand free and pushed her off the couch. “He’s—oh my God, Daphne—” 

Daphne was sitting on the floor, staring at the door. 

“Jesus Christ,” Blaise said, and sprinted out the door into the freezing night.

Daphne let herself fall onto the floor. Everything was spinning. 

❦

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Works discussed in this chapter, including links (accessed May 28, 2020):
> 
> 1\. Hannah Höch, _[Cut with the Dada Kitchen Knife through the Last Years of the Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch in Germany](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hoch-Cut_With_the_Kitchen_Knife.jpg)_ , 1919, collage/montage/photomontage, Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Berlin.
> 
> 2\. Anonymous, _[[Studio photograph of Hugo Ball]](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hugo_Ball_Cabaret_Voltaire.jpg)_ , 1919, photograph/postcard, multiple locations.
> 
> 3\. Man Ray, _[Cadeau [Gift]](https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/man-ray-cadeau-t07883)_ , 1921 [editioned replica 1972], iron and nails, Tate, London.
> 
> 4\. Meret Oppenheim, _[Object](https://www.moma.org/collection/works/80997)_ , 1936, fur and teacup, saucer, and spoon, Museum of Modern Art, New York.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is there art in this chapter, well, no.

She lay on the floor, feeling the grit press into her bare shoulder blades. 

A pizza box. The dust bunnies under the couch. Two scuffs on the skirting board under the bay window. She ran her tongue across her teeth.

The door opened again. Daphne moved her head and saw the last person she expected. 

Hermione Granger. 

Hermione Granger made a face and squatted down next to her. 

“What’s up?” she asked, her clear brown eyes boring into Daphne. “Are you going to be sick?” 

Daphne closed her eyes. 

Tears dripped into her ears. 

She was being fully and truly ridiculous. This was a level of pitiful drama she’d never have imagined. She was well and truly having a white woman breakdown on a sorority floor and there wasn’t even any Taylor Swift playing. 

Daphne heard Hermione say, “Ok,” and then she was gently being helped into a sitting position. She refused to open her eyes. A cup was pressed into her hand. 

“It’s water, drink it,” Hermione said. 

“I’m not even that drunk,” Daphne said when she’d finished. She stared down at the small recycling symbol at the bottom of the opaque plastic. 

“So why are you laying on the floor and crying?” 

“Maybe I should have said I was drunk,” Daphne said with a giggle that turned into a hiccup and a few more tears. 

Hermione shrugged. “All I know is that we were playing Mario Kart in Harry’s room and then a very drunk Draco Malfoy appeared and was very insistent that Ron had wronged you.”

Daphne drew her knees up to her chest.

“He seemed to be wearing a toga made of paper towels.” 

Daphne giggled waterily. “ABC.”

Hermione didn’t seem impressed. 

“Anything But Clothes. That’s the semi theme,” Daphne managed. 

Hermione gave a curt headshake. “Anyway, Ron checked his phone and turned green, literally green, which I haven’t seen since he broke his femur when Stanford fucking Greenspan—anyway, he ran out of the room. Which was weird, because he hates running.” 

She stared at the door. “I figured Harry could take a drunk Malfoy. So I followed Ron and he ran here and then immediately left and then a black dude in a neck ruff ran after him but I was like, well, the problem is definitely in there.” 

Hermione planted her elbows on her knees. “So, it seems like you’re the problem. And I told you not to fuck him about.” 

“I—” Daphne put one hand over her mouth. Maybe she was going to puke “I—” 

Then she was sick, right on top of the rest of the mushroom surprise pizza. 

Hermione watched her but didn’t move. Daphne wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, then closed her eyes, breathed, vomited again, and then leaned back against the couch. 

“I like him,” Daphne said. 

Hermione pinched the bridge of her nose. “Ok, so what is the actual problem here?” 

“He—Blaise was holding my hand.” 

“The neck ruff kid?” 

Daphne nodded. 

“And he’s just a friend, right?”

Daphne nodded again. 

“But I don’t think Ron—”

Hermione got to her feet and held out her hands to Daphne. “Yeah, I get what happened.” She pulled Daphne up. “I’m not stupid.” 

Daphne had to laugh at that. Hermione Granger was the least stupid person she knew. 

“So I’m going to walk you home because I have no fucking idea where Ron went, and you’re going to brush your teeth and go to sleep, and then y’all are going to talk in the morning.” 

It turned out Ron was on the porch of 10 Maple. 

He was sprawled on the porch swing, one leg dangling onto the floor. 

“Ok, I’m leaving,” Hermione said, as their footsteps woke him. She shoved Daphne forward. 

Ron rubbed his eyes. “Daphne?”

“Why are you here?” Daphne said. Her legs weren’t cooperating. “Why are you on my porch?” 

He moved over on the porch swing. She made it there and sat down. Things began spinning a little more. But not in a drunk way. She was very tired. 

“I’m not good at checking my phone,” Ron said. “And then it seemed like you were … occupied.” 

Daphne turned her head to look at him. He kept staring ahead. She couldn’t see his expression. 

“Blaise is—”

“He’s fast,” Ron said.

“So he—”

Ron nodded. He still wasn’t looking at her. The moonlight softened his mouth. 

“It’s like, fine,” Daphne said, gripping the edge of the swing. “It’s cool.”

She felt him turn towards her. “You’ve been crying.” 

Daphne shrugged, folding her arms across her chest, shivering and sweating at the same time in the ridiculous trash bag. 

“Are you cold?” 

She shook her head, but felt his flannel dropping around her shoulders. Daphne squeezed her eyes shut. It was warm from him. From him. 

“Hey,” Ron said, “hey.” 

And one of his arms reached around her and she tilted towards him, her head bonking against his cheek, not daring to exhale until he wrapped his other arm around her. Her neck already hurt but there was no way she was moving first.

“Hey,” he said. She felt his jaw move against the back of her head. “Hey.” 

“Is that the only word you know?” she snuffled. 

She felt the laugh vibrate through his body and hers. He pressed a kiss into the top of her head. 

“Hey,” he said again. “Don’t be rude.” 

The tingling began in her left leg, pressed against his, and spread up to her hips and eventually she tried to push herself away, blinking her eyes open into the soft porch light. 

“I have to go sleep,” Daphne said, tucking her hair behind her ear. 

“Ok.” Ron watched her with a smile. She pushed one of her arms inside the flannel and he shook his head. “Keep it.” 

She tried to stand and wobbled against the porch swing. He caught her, hands on her waist, and she looked down and blushed. He couldn’t tell in the half-light, she hoped, and he let go and stood. 

“Let me walk you home,” he said, towering over her. 

Daphne rolled her eyes and took three steps. 

“I’m home now.” 

“Home safe,” he said.

One hand on the knob, she turned back. 

“Look,” Daphne said. 

“Yeah?” Ron stepped closer and smacked his head into the porch light. He shook his head a few times. 

Daphne took a deep breath and then blurted, “I want to kiss you but also I threw up so I don’t want to kiss you because I don’t want our first kiss to taste like vomit ok goodnight.” She turned the knob and pushed the door in because that was certifiably insane and disgusting and she should just quit while she was still in possession of his flannel. 

He caught her other wrist. 

“Can I take you to breakfast tomorrow?” 

Daphne blinked. 

“Ok,” Ron said, “I’ll be here at ten.” 

He let her hand fall and she walked into the house in a daze. 

❦

Daphne woke up at seven. Her panic ratcheted up ten grew closer and closer. She’d showered, made Blaise coffee—Pansy and Draco were nowhere to be seen, but she didn’t have time to worry about them right now because all her worry was narrowed into the impending doom of— 

Fuck, there was the knock. Blaise saluted her, then padded back upstairs with his mug. 

“Hey,” Ron said. “Good morning.” 

Daphne blinked at him. 

He shoved what were clearly gas station flowers towards her. 

The cellophane crinkled under her fingers. 

“This is a date,” he said, a blush creeping up his neck. “Draco said—”

Daphne snorted. “Because he’s the king of romance.” 

Ron shifted his weight from one foot to the other. 

“Let me put them in water,” Daphne said, wondering why she couldn’t just be nice for once and gestured that he should follow her into the house. There was the crystal vase, because what house was complete without a vause according to Ariadne, so she filled it, cut the ends of the flowers, and then arranged them. 

The crunched daisies and drooping carnations didn’t look half bad. 

She wasn’t a Greengrass for nothing. 

Ron had been standing in the living room the whole time. She set the flowers on the table by the front window, then turned back towards him. 

Oh, he was looking at the painting. 

The lone remnant of Blaise’s sophomore obsession with oils had followed them from Andover. 

“Blaise,” Daphne said, tilting her head and studying their painted expressions. He’d captured Pansy’s death glare when she’d first bobbed her hair, her posture erect in the old wing chair. Draco’s hand across the back of the chair, his intense grey eyes the same but back when he’d slicked his hair back, the other hand in the pocket of his tux. Blaise’s painted counterpart leaned against the other side of the chair, slouching elegantly in a green silk banyan.

And he’d put Daphne on the footstool, leaning her head against Pansy’s knee, Pansy’s hand tangled in her long blond curls. Blaise had insisted she’d be in a white pinafore which Daphne had rolled her eyes at but it was for his art and he’d ended up getting a 6 in the AP, even though technically he shouldn’t have been allowed to submit a two year old painting. 

“His John Singer Sargeant phase,” Daphne said with a laugh. “It’s kind of absurd.” 

Ron reached one hand towards it, then looked back at her. She shrugged. It wasn’t a museum. 

“What’s going to happen to all that dramatic energy at Goldman?” Daphne twisted her signet ring and watched as Ron dragged a finger along the painted Daphne’s cheek. 

“You guys are—” Ron turned towards her. “Really different.” 

Daphne shrugged again, pulling her peacoat around her. She’d considered the flannel but it was a little too flashy this early. She’d folded it and tucked it under her pillow because, fine, she was a sentimental bitch.

“Early exposure to Donna Tartt, everyone being some flavor of queer, too much absinthe,” Daphne said. “Can we go?” 

“Yeah, sure,” Ron said, turning back to look at the painting before Daphne shut the door. Their breath gusted out in clouds. 

“I borrowed Harry’s car.” He gestured towards some tiny red car. 

“Where are we going?” The car was very small for him. And it was a stick. She kept waiting for the gears to crunch, but they glided through the silent town and out to the highway. 

“Diner.” 

He didn’t seem inclined to say much else, so she stared out the window at the trees flashing by. 

It was a very average diner. She attempted to act comfortable in the brown naugahyde booth. They ordered. She stirred the shitty coffee. He asked for soy milk, then pushed the stainless pitcher towards her and dumped four creamers and three sugar packets into his cup. Then he drank a creamer. 

Literally, put one of those tiny plastic beakers to his mouth and tipped it back. She watched the freckles dusted across his Adam’s apple shift as he swallowed. 

“It’s weird, I know,” he said, pushing the empty into his leaning tower of creamers. “Old habit.” 

“Old habit?” 

Ron glanced towards the counter and the waitress. “Yeah, we didn’t have a lot.” 

“A lot of what?” Daphne asked, bewildered. A lot of creamers?

There was a pause. 

“Money?” 

Oh, right, duh. Daphne pressed her lips together and blushed. 

“It was like, exciting when we’d go out,” Ron said, “but like, when something’s free, I still.” He broke off and shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Hey,” Daphne said, putting one face up hand on the table. He was telling her things. “It’s not weird.” 

He looked at her hand, then at her face, then at her hand, then enveloped her hand with his. His hands were so fucking big, Daphne thought, then wriggled her hand out from under his because what the fuck kind of hand holding was that, and interlaced her fingers with his. 

“Oh,” he said, and looked at their hands. “Right.” 

“Yeah,” Daphne said. 

They sat there until their food came, not moving except to lift their coffee mugs with their free hands. She didn’t know what to say into this blossoming lightness. It was just nice to sit and be there, touching him. It was nice. Which sounded stupid but like, there it was. It was nice and it felt simple and good and kind. 

Ron squeezed her hand when the waitress set down his omelette. 

“So,” he said, spreading grape jelly across his toast. “This is date.” 

“You said that already. But with an article.” 

“And you’re—cool with that?” 

He stared at her with a sudden intensity. Daphne fought the urge to laugh. 

“If I weren’t into it,” Daphne said, tracing one finger around the rim of the speckled mug, “if I weren’t into you, do you think I’d be here?” 

“You’re not very predictable,” he said, setting the knife down and biting into his toast. 

“Neither are you,” she shot back, “Mr. Hockey Math Dude.” 

Ron shrugged. “That’s just stuff I do.” 

“You’re like friends with all these famous people,” she said, stabbing a bite of dry and sad waffle.

“I guess,” he said, but his face got a little tighter. “They’re cooler than me.” 

“Ok, one, you’re like, wildly insecure, but you’re hot and smart and nice and you smell good, so like, ok,” Daphne babbled, completely losing her cool at the thought that he might even suspect that she didn’t realize any of these things, because she realized them, so, so hard. “Two, I liked you before I knew about them because you didn’t tell me like, anything about yourself, so you could have been a serial killer but like, good thing for me you’re not, and three, I—”

Ron put his toast down and slid into the banquette next to her. 

She forgot point three as he engulfed her in another one of those weird side hugs he seemed fond of and she honestly hoped that this was not going to become a pattern because it was not comfortable, but she recanted a little as he kissed her on the head again. 

He wound one hand around the far side of her head and Daphne felt like she was going to faint.

Someone needed to compliment this boy more often, if this was what happened. 

After a minute, during which Daphne put one hand on his knee and squeezed it, because that seemed like a comforting thing and he seemed like he was going through something, he unwound his arms and leaned back against the banquette. 

“You’re kind of weird, though,” Daphne said. “You’re going to have to get better at accepting compliments if you’re going to be my boyfriend.” 

Ron grabbed his toast from across the table. “Boyfriend?” 

“I mean, if you want, or something, whatever, labels are lame,” Daphne attempted, glaring at the salt and pepper. 

He nudged her shoulder until she looked at him.

“Labels are cool. I like labels. I like that label.” He grinned at her. “Boyfriend.”

“Great,” Daphne said, “I’ll make you a button or something.” 

“I’d prefer a t-shirt,” he said, “With like your face on it, and then it could say, property of Daphne Greengrass, wait, what’s your middle name?” 

“Oh my God,” Daphne groaned, covering her face. “I’ve created a monster.” 

He poked her in the side. She yelped. He poked her again. 

“It’s Estelle,” she begged. “Mercy.” 

He spread his hands out, framing it: “Property of Daphne Estelle Greengrass.” 

“You seemed so cool,” she said. “But now—”

“I’m even cooler,” he replied with a grin. “Can I eat your waffle?” 

Daphne passed him the syrup—not real maple, but the shitty corn version—and said, “We should go maple syrup tapping. It’s cool. Draco’s family has—”

He stiffened. 

“What?” 

He concentrated on filling each square of waffle with maple syrup. 

“Is Draco like, nice?” Ron asked at last. 

“Um, I guess?” Daphne wasn’t sure about where this question was going. “He’s—he’s—very loyal,” she decided upon. “And if he’s decided you’re worth it, he’s going to walk through fire for you. But he’s not …” 

She twisted her signet ring. 

“Easy.” 

“Easy?” Ron asked around a bite of waffle. 

“He’s not an easy person,” she said. “He’s not nice. But he’s good. Like, deep down good.” 

“Ok,” Ron said, “because I think he slept over at Harry’s.” 

Daphne’s mouth dropped open. She snapped it shut. 

“And Harry’s been through some shit and like, Draco’s dad was a big part of that shit, so I’m not—”

“Ron,” Daphne said, “I don’t know how to say this without sounding like everyone I know and love is completely insane, but Draco has had a crush on Harry for seven years.” 

Ron’s brow wrinkled. “What?” 

“He—oh my God, this sounds so fucking weird—” Daphne pinched her earlobe. “Draco like, researched all the people his dad fucked over while the trial was happening because, that’s just how he deals with emotions, and he saw Harry’s picture in some tabloid and was like, well, this is shit because this is the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen and my dad basically killed his parents so there’s no chance of that. And then Harry’s been all outspoken about you know, everything, and Draco just sits and looks at his instagram and watches all your games and like, fucking pines and I’m—” 

He’d finished the waffle. “That’s definitely weird.” 

“Of course it’s fucking weird,” Daphne said, “But if you’re right, this is like, literally, like—he’s not going to fuck this up.” 

She stared down at the shitty coffee, her mind spinning with revelations. “I can’t believe he like, went to your house because you didn’t text me.” 

“He was very drunk,” Ron said, “and was like, super argumentative—”

“He’s going to law school next year.” 

“Harry was super confused, I think, but like, I heard some stuff this morning on the other side of the wall that was … not confused, let’s say.” 

He shook his head. Daphne snorted. 

She refused to let him pay because she had her dad’s black card. He bundled her back into the car, then drove off in some other direction and she didn’t even want to ask, and then they were pulling up next to a bridge and he turned the car off. He held her hand and they walked to the middle of the bridge. 

It was the ravine. Cragged rocks and white water and pines jutting out and he turned towards her and, cupping her face in his hands, said, “I wanted our first kiss to be special,” then pressed his mouth against hers before she had a chance to taste the full intentionality and romance of his words. 

She’d always thought literature was exaggerating, but now she got it. She got it. This was the biggest feeling she’d ever felt, pulsing out of her body and into the wild sky, and she wrapped her hands around his neck and felt his warmth fill her to the ground. 

When she pulled back to take a breath, his grin was so wide and he bumped his nose against hers and she snuggled into his chest and stared into the ravine. 

“Yeah, that was pretty special,” she said. 

“What?” he said, craning his neck. 

“It was good,” she half-yelled over the rush of the water. “Good!” 

He kissed her again, and that was good, too. 

❦


	10. Chapter 10

“Ok, well,” Daphne said, one hand on her doorknob again. But now it was three in the afternoon. Panic fluttered in her stomach at the day wasted—academically, anyway. 

“Hey.” Ron’s eyebrows drew together. “Are you ok?” 

“Yep.” She turned the knob. 

“You don’t like—”

Daphne turned back around. “I don’t what?” 

He put one hand on the back of his neck and stared at the porch light. “You don’t like, regret this?” 

“Regret what?” Daphne’s stomach was not doing well. Fucking diner food. 

“Uh,” Ron said, “you know. This.” 

Daphne was lost. “What this?” 

“The uh, us this.” 

Daphne blinked. “Wait, are you getting cold feet?” 

Ron didn’t say anything. His eyes were darting around the porch, skittering off everything but her. 

Daphne slammed the door back shut. He jumped. 

She moved towards him until she was inches away from his chest, which was rising unevenly. Daphne threaded one finger through the buttonhole at eye level, then tugged on it until he looked down. 

“I like you,” Daphne forced the words out. “I don’t know why you like me or if this is going to work out for forever, but don’t—”

She dropped her head and glared at the pocket of his t-shirt. 

“I just didn’t get any work done today, and I really won’t get any work done if you break up with me because then I’ll have to cry.” 

“Oh,” Ron said. His hands were warm on her arms. “I don’t like it when you cry.” 

“Well, good,” Daphne said with vehemence. “You shouldn’t. I get quite blotchy.” 

She pressed the side of her face into his chest and felt more than heard his laughter.

“That’s not why, weirdo,” he said, squeezing her. “I don’t want to make you sad.” 

“Don’t get cold feet, then,” she snapped, then tiptoed to kiss him on the cheek. 

She wasn’t going to see him until Tuesday between their class schedules and his hockey, so she allowed herself a few more kisses before shooing him off the porch. 

When she opened the door again, three sets of eyes met hers. Daphne made a swift move for the stairs, but Pansy was on her and dragging her to the couch. 

The tribunal was longer than she’d hoped, but more incredulous (“He took you to a diner?”) and curious (“You just asked him to be your boyfriend?” “Yeah, like it’s hard?” “Bold, Greengrass.” “I don’t like sharing.” “Our little serial monogamist, what did you expect, Pans?”) than scathing. 

They must like him, Daphne reflected, running her nails through Pansy’s hair. It had never been this easy. Not even a soulless ginger joke. 

Filled with an unusual beneficence, she tilted her head at Draco, who blushed and gave a curt head shake. Daphne smirked and shrugged. 

❦

_XVIII. Action Painting, the New York School, and AbEx_

She’d tried to act calm about seeing him again. It was class. Daphne didn’t need the butterflying feelings distracting her from like, the serious topic of the AbEx boys. 

The absurdity of pretending that she cared about Pollock’s self-referential dicking about and the way he’d crushed Krasner’s life and career made her giggle in the middle of Beneton’s. She pushed the lid down on the Mexican hot chocolate—she was running out of options—and walked to class with a smile on her face. 

“Cheerful today, aren’t we?” Geoff asked as he handed her the slide sheet.

“Can I get two?” 

Geoff raised a supercilious eyebrow. Daphne pondered tripping and dousing his CdG tee with six dollars of hot brown goo but confined herself to a wide, vacant grin and went to their seats. 

Ron slid into his chair seconds before lecture started and then, with a cocky grin, kissed her on the cheek before wrapping his hands around the white paper cup and pretending like he was really, supremely interested in _Number 23._

Daphne had no idea what the chair said about early Pollock.

But like, who cared. 

“Was that it?” she shot out at the end of lecture. 

“It was good,” Ron said with a considering nod. 

“But not your usual,” Daphne stared at him. 

He snapped his notebook shut and shoved it back into his backpack. “I have team lunch and then practice today and tomorrow, but want to get breakfast before class Thursday?” 

“Oh, ok,” Daphne said. It wasn’t like she expected him to only hang out with her now, but she was a little stung. 

He stood up and held out one hand. She looked at it, confused. 

“Where are you going?” Ron asked. “I hope you’re going to get lunch now.”

“Oh, yeah,” Daphne said, even though it hadn’t been on the agenda. “I’ll just grab a sandwich at the library cafe.” 

“Cool,” Ron said. “I’ll drop you off.” 

His hand was so warm and dry around hers. Geoff raised his other eyebrow, but this time Daphne’s returning grin was genuine. 

❦

_XIX. Pop-Art_

The dining hall eggs were a congealed mess and the orange juice was colored water, but the way Ron’s eyes lit up when she appeared was a saving grace. 

“It’s you,” he hissed halfway through lecture at Lichtenstein’s scowling blonde. 

_Rude_ , she scrawled in the corner of his notebook. 

_Ur prettier,_ he wrote back, then smirked, _less red._

Daphne rolled her eyes and went back to her pristine notebook. 

And then he leaned over and drew a hideously lopsided smiley face next to her Lichtenstein section. 

Those goddamn blue eyes got him out of everything. 

“You free Friday?” he asked when they’d reached the side entrance of the library. 

“Yeah?” 

“We’re uh—”

He was interrupted by some blonde man and had to do inane chat. Daphne shifted her bag on her shoulder. He didn’t introduce her. 

“There’s a game Friday,” Ron said finally. 

“Why didn’t you introduce me?” Daphne asked, her stomach churning. 

“Oh, fuck,” Ron’s mouth dropped open, “I didn’t—” 

“I mean,” Daphne said and bit her lip. “It’s fine if you want to like, keep this a secret or whatever because I’m not—”

Ron cut her off by pressing his mouth against hers. 

“You can’t just distract me with your mouth!” Daphne attempted after a minute. 

“I’m sorry,” Ron said, “but I think I can.” 

His smirk mellowed. “I’m sorry, though. I don’t want you to be secret; I’m just kind of dumb. Plus,” he said, spinning her towards the library door, “Josh is lame.”

“Irrelevant,” Daphne said, “Completely and utterly irrelevant.” She scowled at him until he looked contrite and bent to kiss her again. 

“Friday!” Ron yelled over his shoulder as he walked away. “I’ll have Hermione text you!”

She waved one hand, but her mind was already with Rousseau.

❦

Hermione met her at the door of the arena. She pressed a ticket into Daphne’s hand, then narrowed her eyes at the man beside her. 

Draco, who’d begged and begged and promised Daphne weekly Monroe’s milkshakes all spring term for the second ticket, tried a kind smile. 

He looked a bit like a shark. 

Daphne took pity on him, and said, “Hermione, Draco, Draco, Hermione.” 

Draco extended one black-gloved hand. Hermione took it in hers and, from Draco’s face, squeezed it to a pulp. Daphne fought a giggle. 

“Follow me,” Hermione said and led them into the arena right down to like, the front. Draco and Daphne exchanged a look. 

Hermione turned back. “Didn’t Ron tell you it was the—” 

Daphne shook her head. Draco had paled. She knew this was a bit more obvious than the low key Potter stalking they’d imagined, so she squeezed his hand and dragged him after Hermione before he disappeared.

“So,” Hermione said when they were seated. “You’re dating Ron now, yes?” 

Daphne nodded. “I, um,” Hermione slapped a program into her lap. Daphne passed it to Draco. “I asked him. If he wanted to be my boyfriend.” 

A smile spread across Hermione’s face. “Maybe you’re not as—” she shook her head and smiled. “I’m glad you—” she shook her head again, as though to clear her thoughts. “He’s more fragile than he looks.” 

“Oh, I know,” Daphne said, “Every time I compliment him, he like, combusts.” 

Hermione sighed. 

“I don’t know why,” Daphne continued, suddenly anxious that Hermione understand what she meant, “because, objectively, he’s smart and kind and attrac—”

Music started blaring through the speakers and Daphne jumped. Hermione patted her knee and turned her attention to the ice. 

Draco, who’d rather carelessly left the program open to an interview with a certain Potter, grabbed Daphne’s arm in a death grip. God, she was going to have to manage him all evening. 

“There’s Ron,” Hermione said, tapping Daphne's other arm. She glanced at Daphne, then clarified, “He’s the one wearing all the pads? Because he’s in goal?” 

“Hm,” Daphne said. Which role he played in hockeyland hadn’t even been on her list of questions.

This was less good, though, because it turned out that this meant that Ron was constantly throwing himself down on the ground—“Ice,” Hermione corrected—to stop the puck, and then it was highly anxiety-inducing when everyone else was bearing down on him in what looked like a mob or when they faced just him, which didn’t seem quite fair. 

Add to that Draco’s little gasps and increasing death grip whenever Harry had control of the puck that, over the course of the periods, turned into increasingly profane curses against anyone wearing the opposite color who dared to skate too close to Potter, and now Hermione had a sharp eye on both of them, and Daphne wanted to perform correctly and be the supportive girlfriend, but she really didn’t know what was going on and didn’t want them to dent Ron’s face. 

Thankfully, it ended with a goal into the other team’s net. Hermione and Draco were both on their feet, yelling encouragement (Hermione) and insults (Draco). 

She wanted to take a nap. 

Then Draco smacked her on the shoulder and she looked up.

Ron’s hair was vertical with sweat, as he banged one hand on the partition and grinned at Daphne before he was borne away by his team. 

“He waved at me,” Draco sank back down. 

“I’m pretty sure he was waving at me,” Daphne said. 

“No, Harry,” Draco hissed. “Harry! Harry!”

Hermione gave him a pitying look, but shepherded them to Gamma to await pizza and the arrival of the damp, glowing mob. 

Ron bounded through the door, saw Daphne, and lifted her up and spun her around while yelling something completely incomprehensible. Daphne was very sure she’d kicked at least four people before he set her down and kissed her, then wrapped one arm around her and introduced her to literally everyone in his line of sight. 

Which like, she’d asked for, but after the third Kyle, her eyes glazed over. 

Potter appeared with two beers in each hand. 

He’d just opened the final can when Draco floated out from behind Ron. 

“You,” Potter said. He thrust the beer towards Draco, who took it with only a mild sneer. Which, Daphne thought, was fucking generous of him, even if no one else appreciated it. 

“Oh, you know,” Draco said.

“I’m just gonna—” Harry said and darted out of the room. 

Ron glanced down at her. Daphne shrugged as much as she could while squished under his broad arm. 

Draco attempted a smile. 

“And that’s Jacko,” Ron said to no one in particular, “he’s the left winger.” 

“Babe,” Daphne tried, pleased with the flush that spread across Ron’s cheekbones, “I have no idea what that means.” 

“Ok, so,” he said, spreading his hands out for an explanation, “start with the goalkeeper, that’s me, then in front of me, you’ve got—”

Potter reappeared, now wearing a button down. Half his hair stuck up. He grabbed the can from Draco’s hand and replaced it with a bottle of Sam Adams. 

“Oh,” Draco said, perking up. 

Potter glanced at the can in his hand, as though he was confused about how it had got there, then handed it to a random boy who chugged it and threw the can to the ground. Draco’s mouth twitched. 

“Ok, so you’ve got the right defenseman to my right, and then—”

“It’s better than that shit,” Potter said, clinking the bottom of his bottle against Draco’s. 

“How come I don’t get a Sam?” Hermione asked with a twinkle in her eye. 

“You know where they are.” His eyes didn’t leave Draco’s face. 

“So then there’s the left defense—”

❦

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Works discussed in this chapter, including links (accessed May 31, 2020):
> 
> 1\. Jackson Pollock, _[Number 23](https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/pollock-number-23-t00384)_ , 1948, enamel on gesso on paper, Tate, London.  
> 2\. Roy Lichtenstein, _[Blonde Waiting](https://arthive.com/roylichtenstein/works/483107~Blonde_waiting)_ , 1964, oil, acrylic on canvas, private collection.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a while, because one, contemporary art, and two, it's the final chapter.

_XX. Postwar Europe_

She’d finished her paper a week before because four double-spaced pages comparing Oppenheim’s _Object_ and Schwitters’ _Merzbau_ was the kind of thing Daphne would have written for her pretentious little tumblr in seventh grade, but of course Ron didn’t even read the assignment until he rolled over in her bed and opened the Canvas app on his phone at 5:30 the night before it was due so she kissed the tip of his nose and pushed him out of her bedroom. Not that he’d asked for her help or anything (she rolled her eyes at her own reflection, spattered with the toothpaste flecks because oh my God did anyone else do their chores in this house, because once upon a time, she’d thought Ron had only wanted to be around her for her art historial brain and that was so, so idiotic.)

He was still downstairs. Daphne could feel the rumble of his low voice through the floorboards. Blaise was probably spinning him some heinous line of reasoning Geoff would be able to sense was plagiarised or Draco would be grilling him about Harry.

She needed a cup of tea anyway. Sleepytime, obviously. She’d brushed her teeth. 

“Hey,” Blaise said. “Tea?” Daphne wrinkled her nose in a smile at him. He arched a hand back and flicked the kettle’s switch. 

Ron glanced back and his entire face lit up. Daphne blinked. She wasn’t used to such naked adoration or whatever it was. Pulling her sleeves down over her hands, she smiled at him and then he pushed his chair back from the table and opened his arms. 

Daphne blinked again, one hand on the cupboard with the mugs in it. 

“Come here,” Ron said, and Daphne fought the wanting to melt part of her and swallowed and glanced at Blaise as she got closer, her heart in her mouth suddenly and this was all too weird, like, he wasn’t allowed to just be happy in their kitchen because like, it was too normal or—and then his arms wrapped around her and he pulled her onto his lap. 

Daphne froze. This had to be so weird for Blaise. 

“Codfish,” Blaise said with a smile, so Daphne snapped her mouth shut. He rose and set out three mugs, unwrapping the teabags, and moving with his languid grace as though it were an ordinary Tuesday night. 

Ron loosened his arms slightly. “Not a fan?”

Daphne bit her lip. 

“Oh, _I_ don’t mind your domestic bliss,” Blaise said with a theatrical trill. 

“Oh,” Daphne managed, and attempted to relax while still trying to hold all of her weight inwards. 

“Good, then,” Ron said. He didn’t seem to understand that she would crush him because he hitched her closer to him and sunk his chin into her shoulder. “I picked the Dalí one because you hate him—” 

“I do not _hate_ Dalí—”

“I just think he’s overrated,” Ron and Blaise chorused. 

Daphne sighed and let herself go. She wasn’t going to break Ron. 

“Anyway,” she said, and leaned forward to start reading his essay. 

(Obviously he stayed the night, but that wasn’t going to make her late, and she slapped both their essays, hot from the printer, into Geoff’s waiting hands with a little grin on her face because Geoff knew and narrowed his dumb eyes behind his hideous-on-purpose glasses and even if she had to sit through the blatant misogyny of Klein’s blue nudes, she knew the chair would hit hard and yep, there was a gruesome Bacon pope and Richter’s _Uncle Rudi,_ and while her brain churned, her heart was the color of a Hockney pool and she was attempting to take notes while holding someone’s hand). 

❦

_XXI. Minimalism_

She wasn’t looking forward to minimalism because like, she knew she was supposed to get it and like, invest herself in something that wasn’t only political art or figurative because the hierarchy of abstraction was still strong and she really needed to work to understand like, teaching the canon and all that shit, but she fought a sigh at the slide sheet which was, no joke, 95% _Untitled._

For some reason, the chair decided to start with an _Untitled_ by Morris, which, like, how were the boxes held together because neither nails or an adhesive appeared on the slide sheet.

“Oh, is today going to be bad?” Ron asked as he slid a coffee towards her. 

She tapped one nail on the slide sheet. 

“Shit, dude,” he said, and then, around the pencil jammed into his back teeth, “I think each artist should only get one untitled per career, like, use it carefully, motherfuckers.”

Daphne put her coffee down, pulled the pencil out of his mouth, and kissed him hard—briefly, because it was 10 am and her advisor could pop up at any moment—but she wasn’t going to let his wonderful mind even wonder if she didn’t appreciate him. 

❦

_XXII. Feminist Art_

Daphne woke up on the morning of feminist art with a migraine and fell back into bed without even attempting to email anyone about it because Walters knew what was up if she didn’t show up and she’d email later but right now she groped around for her meds. 

(Ron showed up that evening with the slide sheet, actual photocopies of his notes, and a clamshell of dining hall chicken alfredo, because Blaise told him she wasn’t feeling well, and this was kinda like chicken noodle soup.)

(And then he spent the next hour muttering about Eva Hesse and how the strands of _Metronomic Irregularity_ were evocative of some physics principle but also, like, wasn’t, because like art isn’t supposed to be science but also science wasn’t tidy either, and the gentle rumble of his voice lulled her to sleep). 

❦

_XXIII. Conceptual Art_

The endless bubble of happiness could never have endured, and as Daphne attempted to seat herself while balancing the two paper cups, she tripped and doused Ron with a volcanic torrent of matcha. 

Her heart caught in her throat, she froze. 

“Oh, shit,” he said, sounding dazed and looking down at the verdant milk sinking into his jeans.

Then there were a bunch of people crowding in and around and offering napkins and Daphne croaked, “I’ll get some paper towels,” and, like she was floating along on a track, moved through the white space of the museum to the women’s bathroom, and then instead of getting the paper towels like she’d said, she found herself locking the stall door and resting her head against the orange tiled wall and allowing the tears to drip down her face and fill the shallow indentation of the plastic lid.

There was a knock on the stall door. 

She only knew one person who’d wear size thirteen orange low tops. 

“Are you ok?” 

She couldn’t make her mouth open. She was supposed to vanish now because it was a vanitas to assume like— 

“I, uh, don’t think you’re going to the bathroom, but like, knock on the door or make a noise if you are because—” 

Daphne’s hands were claws. 

And then he was peering up at her, head hovering just above the bathroom floor. “Hey.” His eyes were blue and wrinkled in smile lines. 

“Gross,” she said, and then started crying again. Somehow he was inside the stall and was shepherding her out to the sinks, untwisting her hands and washing them for her, and his front was sodden but less green, which was good, and she stumbled into him, her nose squished against the front of his shiny athletic sweatshirt. 

She attempted to snort some of the snot back into her nose. 

“You put your head on the ground.” 

He leaned back, tried to wipe a tear and half-stabbed her in the eye with a calloused thumb, and smiled. “It’s tile, Greengrass.”

“Still,” Daphne said. “Gross.” Her sight blurred again. 

“Hey, hey,” he mumbled and nudged her face up towards him. She could only focus on the freckles along his chin. “I don’t like it when you cry.” 

“Well, I don’t like it either, but you’re not supposed to be here, are you?”

There was a pause. Daphne steeled herself against the disengagement. 

“I mean, I get it’s a women’s bathroom but one, gendered bathrooms are stupid and two, you’re clearly not ok, so,” he trailed off. 

She couldn’t look up at him so she addressed the machine-embroidered logo on his left pec. “I poured a hot beverage all over you and you’re not even kind of annoyed?”

Ron huffed. “I did have a brief panic about third-degree dick burns but it wasn’t that hot. And it wasn’t like you did it on purpose?” 

Daphne didn’t say anything. 

“Wait, was it on purpose?” He sounded a little panicked and backed up half a step. “Is it like a sign you want to break up? Are you mad? Did I fuck up?” 

“No,” Daphne said, and to her utter confusion, began thumping his irritatingly firm chest with an open palm, “I’m not mad, you’re supposed to be mad at me because I fucked up and you’re going to have to go change or something and the rest of your day is ruined and it’s a sign that I’m not cool and fun and I can’t even play off a normal accident like I’m the one who spilled something on you and fucked our participation grades because now you’re comforting me in the bathroom when we’re supposed to be in class because I’m such a selfish bi—”

“Nope,” Ron interrupted, and kissed her. It wasn’t an elegant kiss and it didn’t make her stomach leap but her heartbeat slowed, just a little, and when he pulled his mouth away, it was only so he could press his forehead against hers and glare down at her. 

She glared back at him and then she blurted, “You’re a stupidly hot cyclops.” 

Daphne felt his laugh reverberate across her own skull. 

“You’re a stupidly hot cyclops, too.”

She sighed and closed her eyes, then forced the next words out. “You’re not supposed to keep liking me.”

“Hey,” Ron said, “open your eye.” 

She did. 

“Tell me that while looking at me.”

“I—” Daphne swallowed a few times. His goddamn blue eyes. Eye. He was extending her idiotic comment and making it sweet but she couldn’t quite believe that he was still there.

“See, you can’t say it to my face—”

“To your eye,” she half-snapped. 

“To my eye,” he said, narrowing it in a kindly glare, “so it can’t be true.” 

He kissed the tip of her nose and pulled back. 

“But,” Daphne said, and then more just kept rushing out, “You’re so good and kind and you don’t get mad or take offense at stuff and I don’t know how or why so I’m just waiting for the other shoe to drop and like, why are you with me anyway?” 

“Why am I with you?” He sounded incredulous. “Do you like—”

“Ok,” Ron said, pressing his hands together in a praying gesture and then bringing it to his lips, taking a deep breath, and then he said in a burst, “Do you know what it’s like to be the sixth kid? In a family of seven? Where like, they probably didn’t want you because they wanted a girl and you ended up being a boy and so you just do whatever your brothers do because you’re always a unit anyway and then when you go to college on the same sports scholarship, well, need scholarship but with the expectation you’ll play the sport you’ve played since you were four because everyone in your family does, by accident you end up befriending two really famous people who seem to like you but everyone else just wants to be near you to get near them or to meet your older brother in the NHL or the one who works at ESPN and then you walk into this gen ed class and see this gorgeous girl who clearly knows what the fuck is going on so you sit next to her and she like, has no idea who you are which, actually, is a great feeling because no one’s ever like, paid attention to you because it’s you before, and she’s weird and funny and smart and kind of dumb because you’re trying super hard to flirt with her but she doesn’t seem to be getting it but maybe it’s because she’s so out of your league that there’s no way she’d consider it because like turns out she’s not only beautiful and smart, her family’s like fucking loaded and she speaks four languages and rides horses and shit and then you try to ask her out and her rude friend actually makes it happen so you take her ice skating and she holds your hand and then like, you somehow get to kiss her and like—”

He pressed his index fingers against his lips, his middle fingers squishing his nose a bit. 

“I don’t know why I like you or why you like me, but like, you’re the only who sees me for me like, other than Harry and Hermione, but like, I don’t want to kiss them all the time, or at all, really, ever, never wanted to kiss either of them, and, fuck me—” 

His hands flew apart and he seemed like he suddenly had never had hands before because they were flying all over as he tried to decide where to put them. 

“Hey,” Daphne said fiercely and stepped towards him. “First, I only speak three languages.” She wrapped one hand around his bicep. He was trembling. 

Her brain just kind of went static and she just stood there, holding onto his arm as though it were the only thing keeping her upright, because she was filled with a kind of crusading force of goodness and light because she mattered to him, so much more than she had dared to hope. 

Daphne tried to pull her thoughts back into words. “I’m—I’m not sure what my other points were going to be,” she said, swallowing the word love, and then continued, suddenly filled with that rage again, “You’re like one of those plants that only blooms at night and most people are too stupid to be awake then, and—”

Then the only word that came through was love, so she shut her mouth and wound her other hand around his head and kissed him. 

Daphne didn’t know how long they stood there, kissing and breaking away to stare at each other and smile and then kissing again, and then an elderly auditor opened the door with a gasp. 

Ron blushed to the roots of his hair and started stammering when the woman tutted and said, “Fear not, my young art lovers,” then marched towards the handicapped stall. Daphne and Ron collapsed into silent giggles.

❦

_XXIV. Final Exam_

They hadn’t gone back to conceptualism, but Pansy gave them a surprisingly lucid stoned version of the story while shoveling pad thai into her mouth with one hand and emailing Geoff that since he was the only person she was fucking and had been fucking for the past sixth months, and she suddenly now had chlamydia thanks to the STI test she’d gotten yesterday at the student health center, he was clearly fucking someone else and so he could go keep fucking that person because Parkinsons didn’t share and she’d made that very clear from the outset, thank you very much. 

Blaise had raised his eyebrows and mouthed, “Finally,” at Daphne, because she was the only one who was paying any attention to him. 

Ron had blinked his way through Pansy’s lecture but from the even way his chest was rising and falling, Daphne knew he’d passed out. Some hockey something, she reminded herself, which was why Draco had planted Harry on the floor in front of his chair and was giving him a very thorough neck massage, but any flimsy excuse to touch the human he'd pined after for so long would suffice, so Daphne rolled her eyes back at Blaise.

She leaned back into the arm of the sagging couch and considered Ron. His head thrown back off the couch, one arm shielding his eyes from the overhead light, he was, and God, would she ever admit this thought, like one of David’s warriors or a marble satyr, but his chest rose and fell and she could slide one hand up his crumpled shirt or across his hip bones or along the curve of his bicep and, blushing, Daphne shook her head. 

Modernism 101 ended tomorrow. Not with a bang, but with the hushed pencil scratching of an exam. 

She extended her foot into his armpit and he woke with a jolt, capturing her stockinged foot before even opening his eyes. 

“Exam,” she said and wrinkled her nose at him. 

“Is that what they’re calling it,” Pansy deadpanned, draping herself around Blaise’s shoulders and kissing the top of his head. 

“Oh, no,” Ron said, slightly garbled with sleep, “we actually have to study. Daphne’s like, tough. Greenberg and shit.” 

Daphne rose and pulled him up from the couch. “Greenberg and shit? As if I even like Greenberg—well, maybe early Greenberg—” 

“You do though, secretly, because at the bottom of your little radical heart,” he kissed the top of her head, “You’re a formalist just like good old Clement and the rest of them because you don’t want to give up on the idea of the thing mattering, so—” 

“I’m sorry, but the thingness of the thing does matter,” Daphne said, and had one foot raised to stomp it down when Ron flipped her over one shoulder and then, since he was now carrying her up the stairs, decided to continue her train of thought: “The material properties and quality of a work matter to understand its thematic message or visual argument, and if that makes me a formalist, then—”

❦

He tucked her flashcards back into her Longchamp, kissed her cheek, and then slid over two seats. She had five blue books; he said he’d be fine with two. 

The slides were mortifyingly simple. Ditto the essays. 

Ron finished before her, and, mildly irritated, Daphne tucked her pencil away, shifted her signet ring, handed Geoff her stack of blue books (four, as it turned out), and walked out of the lecture hall.

The smell of Axe hit her. Of course he’d waited. 

He was leaning against one of the white walls of the lower gallery which was definitely not allowed, but it wasn’t like she was going to disturb one of the real works of art (God, she was getting disgusting). 

“Nailed it, champ?”

“Translate your sports lingo, jock.” She rolled her eyes, then stilled. “Wait, you never told me your drink order.” 

Ron blinked. “Oh, yeah,” he said, and then shrugged. “I never bought anything.” 

“What?” 

His dimple appeared. “Your favorite latte is like, seven dollars, Daphne.” 

Daphne’s hand flew to her mouth.

“But I wasn’t about to admit defeat in the coffee guessing endeavour, so,” he shrugged again, “I just got water in a hot cup. I do like hot chocolate, though.”

“You rumplestiltskinned me,” Daphne said with a gasp. 

“Don’t hate the player.”

“Hate the game theorist,” she said and then wrinkled her nose at her own idiocy. “And the oblivious rich girl.” 

“Nah,” he said and smiled. “They’re both kinda stupid.”

Daphne hummed, then, twirling the end of her ponytail around her finger, mused, “Hermione said we were both dumb-smart.” 

“Yeah, and she’s smart-smart, so she’d know,” Ron said and pushed himself off the wall, then paused, did a little half-bow, and asked in a horrible approximation of what Daphne could only assume was a French accent, “May I treat madame to the dining hall’s finest chicken à la nugget?” 

Daphne tilted her head as she glanced down. “With sauce à la ranch?” 

“If you tell me what you thought of that highly complimentary Dalí prompt,” he said with a cheeky grin. 

“Oh, you’re going to owe me a gallon of ranch,” Daphne said with a laugh and squeezed his hand. 

❦

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Works discussed in this chapter, including links (accessed July 20, 2020):
> 
> 1\. Meret Oppenheim, _[Object](https://www.moma.org/collection/works/80997)_ , 1936, fur and teacup, saucer, and spoon, Museum of Modern Art, New York.  
> 2\. Kurt Schwitters, _[Merzbau](https://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/tate-papers/08/kurt-schwitters-reconstructions-of-the-merzbau)_ , 1937, installation artwork (see link for full description), destroyed.  
> 5\. [International Klein Blue.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Klein_Blue)  
> 4\. Francis Bacon, _[Study after Velázquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Study_after_Vel%C3%A1zquez%27s_Portrait_of_Pope_Innocent_X)_ , 1953, oil on canvas, Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, Iowa, USA.  
> 2\. Gerhard Richter, _[Uncle Rudi](https://www.gerhard-richter.com/en/art/paintings/photo-paintings/death-9/uncle-rudi-5595)_ , 1965, oil on canvas, Lidice Collection, Lidice, Czech Republic.  
> 3\. David Hockney, _[Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portrait_of_an_Artist_\(Pool_with_Two_Figures\))_ , 1972, acrylic on canvas, private collection.  
> 4\. Robert Morris, _[Untitled](https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/morris-untitled-t01532)_ , 1965 (reconstructed 1971), mirror glass and wood, Tate, London.  
> 5\. Eva Hesse, _[Metronomic Irregularity [I]](https://www.evahessedoc.com/slideshow?lightbox=image_co7)_ , 1966, Painted wood, Sculp-Metal, and cotton covered wire, [private collection; I think, as I cannot find further information on this, please let me know!].


End file.
